I agree. A lot of these have pretty beat up cases and bezels, and this case is pretty crisp. I also notice that the internal timing ring has retained most of its black color - many are faded to grey (which I like actually).
Myself and @Jim W put some time a few years back into building a price guide for some vintage Seikos, kinda inspired by the great work on Price Chart – Speedmaster101. It's not a scientific exercise in collating every sale or auction and showing the price (neither of us has the time or energy for that), but rather it's based on what we have observed and to a degree, what we would be prepared to pay for a given watch in a given condition. (35) The Vintage Seiko Valuation Guide | The Watch Site Filtering out to Blue 6139s... I'd have said a Good to Excellent non-RESIST 6139-6002 would be in the region of $650 to $750 plus another $130 for the original bracelet (+/- a bit for condition). So a Good blue on tapered H-link should be $750+ and I think the OP watch is probably more like $800-900 with the bracelet.
So, to conclude: After a flight to Europe (the watch and a friend, not me) and a few coffees (me and a friend, not the watch), I now have it in my hands and can gladly post a few (possibly better) pictures. Since the content of this forum is (also) educational, wanted to post, so that it can be used for critic, comparison and so on in the future. I really really like and am currently having a honeymoon with this piece. The colour of the dial, the condition of it, as well as the condition of the hands and the case and the bracelet are awesome. It was worn, but I believe either sparingly or it was just handled from time to time but not truly hard worn. Too bad on some scratches on the bezel but for me, it still looks great. Specially the bracelet is sharp. I took it to my watchmaker today and we measured with the correct lift angle and it read a surprising +0 with aplititude of 270°. I am wearing confidently and have been using the chrono function every now and then and everything works. Sometimes the chrono second hand resets to a slight different position than absolute 0 but it performs well. Some people wanted to see the 140 mark on the bezel for reference, here it goes: And then of course some wrist shots Thank you guys for your help, most specially @ewand for sharing incredibly deep knowledge and for keeping a great database on vintage Seikos.
Congrats Looks like a nice example, and patina is a good thing! I have 2 6139’s one blue like yours and one silver dial I’ll have to check them out closely now that I have learned a lot from this thread! JT