The SBGX261 was my very first Grand Seiko. If I told you how much time I spent gazing (with a loupe and the naked eye) at the way this texture of the tops of the hands picks up and re-transmits light, sometimes creating little diffraction rainbows because of how fine the physical features are, you might not believe it. Oh, who am I kidding? You'd believe it. Dark-dialed Grand Seikos like this tend to have a hand top texture which picks up and reflects light from many angles and manages to look like it's glowing, without lume, even in surprisingly dim light (creating a contrast with the dark dial and making the watch improbably readable). Light-dialed Grand Seikos on the other hand tend to be given hands with angled large polished surfaces; if one of them reflects a light source toward you it will glint like a cut gem, but at least one of those surfaces is likely not to be reflecting the primary light source in your direction – and so, because of how absurdly good the polished surfaces are, a facet not reflecting toward you will appear black (and will thus contrast with the light-colored dial behind it). [jbm-20200826-042_051]
Here we see that the back edge of this SBGY003 hour hand not only has crisp edges, the side surface is finished without visible artifacts; the pattern you see there is a clean reflection of the watch's face pattern. Note that things aren't completely pristine here, though: this is a real-world photo of the watch in that you can see how the bottom of the second hand is finished in one reflection, and can see a bit of schmutz in another. jbm-20200819-sl2-023
