#50 G-Shock for the German Police: DPolG

Here it is. The 50th and last article on my 50 Gs weblog for this year. It has been quite a Moloch to write an article every week. I don't know how, but it seems to cost me more and more time to make a new article. More text about backgrounds, more detailed photo's. I do not know what I am going to do with 50 Gs next year. I think I will release the pressure on my a bit and only write every now and then instead of every week. A 50 Gs article takes about 8 to 10 hours of work a week of my free time and I don't get paid for it. It's time to spend more time on my family and contribute a little more to the G-Shock forum. We will see what happens in 2011. First I hope you enjoy reading this article about a very nice old limited edition G-Shock, that's hidden in this box. I hope you will continue reading 50 Gs in 2011. Everyone have a great Holiday Season! Cheers!

In December 2001 I saw this watch on auction on eBay Germany. I do not remember the exact end price of the Auction, I believe it was around DM110.-, but more important,  I was the lucky winner. Like always I wrote the seller soon after the end of the auction. I do not exactly remember if I got a fast reaction, but as soon as I got the details I had sent the money to Germany. For a long time it remained silent, but in January I still got no reaction, and worse, also no watch. I was pretty worried, since for that time, that was a lot of money for a G-Shock.

In these days there were two ways to sent money to a German seller. You could sent money via the bank. At that time a time consuming operation. It was not possible via internet banking, so I had to go to the bank with all the information needed and had to fill in a lot of paperwork at the counter. 

Another method was sending money in a "shielded" envelope and sent it out registered. We didn't have the Euro at that time (I have totally no idea why a lot of people still want to go back to all those national currencies...), so I had to get German Marks. First I had to get them from the bank. In Vlissingen the bank had a special ATM that distributed foreign currency bank notes. Later I had a much better solution. A friend of me has a antiques/furniture shop. A lot of his customers come from Germany. As he delivers furniture in Germany a lot, he also had a lot of German Marks in cash. 

How did I sent the money shielded? It was actually pretty simple. I put the money behind a free card (which you can get at schools, café's, libraries, etc) and put aluminum foil around it. This way, it is impossible to detect that there are bank notes in the letter. the costs of sending money registered to Belgium was cheaper than an international bank transfer. 

I am pretty happy the Euro was introduced in 2002. In the beginning there were still high costs for international bank transfers, but I could make them at home behind my computer, which is much more easy. Now the costs of transering Euro's to another Euro country is free of charge, if you use the international bank number (IBAN). This has saved me a lot of money (I had to pay sometimes over €60.- for international bank transfers per month, so you still complain about the 3% Paypal commission?) .

Since I had the name and address of the seller I searched and found his telephone number in an on-line telephone book. I think I was waiting for about a month when I dialed the telephone number. A woman took up the phone. According her name, it was the seller’s wife. I do not speak German very well, but I managed to make clear I had bought and paid for a watch of her husband. She noted my name and told me she would tell it to her husband.

Within a week a small package arrived. The watch was packed in a very nice tin with the DpolG logo on it. The watch itself looked awesome. I knew how a basic DW-6600 looks like, but this one looked nicer. On most models with a design in the backlight, this design remains hidden until the light is turned on, but the big logo on this model is quite hard to overlook.

This model was realized by a German Casio dealer in Sahms called Freetime Sportuhrenversand which is run by Ralph and Kerstin Thimian (the warranty card shows an address in Reinbek, 24km from Sahms). Freetime was not only responsible for the DPolG model, also the MTV and Buchstabe models were from this firm. The MTV model seems to be highly collectible. If one pops up for auction, the bidding can end at a considerable high price. The Buchstabe model was released in Japan as the A-Z Gangsters. I do not know if the A-Z Gangsters were released before or after the Buchstabe series, though these are actually the same models. Freetime Sportuhrenversand is now called Sportuhren.de.

For the DPolG I think someone of the Police had good connections with Freetime and asked if they could realize a limited G-Shock model.

DPolG is short for Deutsch Politzeigewerkschaft, the union for Police employees. The DPolG is part of the DBB, the Deutsche Beambtenbund, which is the German overall organization for civil servants Unions. The DPolG is located in Berlin and has about 80,000 members. With an emission of 750 G-Shock,s the DPolG model was an interesting watch. If only 1% of the members of the Union would buy the watch, they will sell out. If you release a watch for a specific group of people, it is pretty hard to get hold on one. G-Shocks were pretty much worn in Germany around 1998 to 2000 and are still popular under police officers and firemen. Since I got this watch in 2002 I have only seen this watch on auction once. I was even tempted to get a second, but let it go to make another G-Shock sammler happy.

Ralph Thimian once wrote Freetime had let Casio manufacture 750 pieces of this DPolG version in 1999. Only Number 0 stayed in Japan and is in the Casio Manufactory Museum. I also discovered that one of these DPolG models ended up in a collection in Japan. Unfortunately the “G-Shock Museum website” of this collector is already years off-line.

Buyers of this watch got a certificate with the number of their watch on it. The number of the watch can also be found on a sticker at the bottom of the tin.

The DPolG model is based on the Japanese DW-6600B-1A model. The overseas basic black DW-6600 model, with the red G-Shock text and white lettering on the bezel is officially never released in Japan. The DW-6600B-1A model is on the contrary a common model there, while hardly found here. The model number of the DPolG G-Shock is DW-6600B-1AP.

The DW-6600B-1AP has an unusual orange/white color scheme. I think it looks very nice. The DW-6600 was the first model with the EL backlight. That is probably why the DW-6600B has written ELECTO LUMINECENCE printed on the band. The Shock Resist logo, which is mostly found on the face or etched on the back is printed on the other strap. The strap is perforated with three rows of holes. Ventilation through these holes might bring the wearer comfort when wearing on hot summer days. I think the design looks pretty well. Maybe Casio should bring this straps back on more new models.

Normally I would prefer a DW-6900 model, but this logo is perfect for the big display of the 1199 module of the DW-6600. The EL backlight is not easy to read. The logo in the backlight is the biggest I have ever seen and probably the biggest Casio ever used.

I think this watch, number 392 of 750, is one of the high lights of my collection. I paid a lot of money for a G-Shock at that time, though compared with the prices today, €55.- is very cheap and I would be easily willing to pay double now.