Casio’s Crystal G-Shock Is the Most Expensive Ever Made

At Madison Square Garden in New York City on November 9, 2017, at the G-Shock 35th Anniversary Celebration, G-Shock creator Kikuo Ibe showed off three sapphire-crystal prototype watches: one clear, one ruby, and one sapphire blue. Because machining sapphire was so difficult at the time, each watch took over a month to produce.

These were built with, for the time, high-end Casio features such as Tough Solar power and Multiband 6 radio-controlled timekeeping—but as they didn’t meet the G-Shock shock-resistance standards, the trio was never intended for sale. They were primarily a symbol of innovation for the Japanese brand, which started in 1983 specializing in super-tough performance timepieces.

Now, nine years later, in what Casio is calling the culmination of an “eight-year project” (so presumably the ball started rolling soon after the excited reception Ibe’s crystal concepts got on stage at MSG), G-Shock is launching a three-watch collection using blue sapphire as an expression of what happens when G-Shock toughness meets Japanese engineering. The flagship model, and by far the most expensive, is the $80,000 MRG-D5000, the first-ever retail G-Shock with an outer case and bezel hewn entirely from blue sapphire crystal.

The collection is called the “Blue Rose Project” because the blue rose is viewed as a symbol of making the impossible possible since it doesn’t exist in nature. It sees the super-expensive MRG-D5000 released alongside the $9,500 MRG-B5000SA-2, and the GMW-B5000SB-1A for $850.

Only 20 of the $80,000 MRG-D5000 full-sapphire G-Shocks will be made, putting these rugged “luxury” timepieces somewhat implausibly in the same price bracket as a Patek Philippe or Porsche Macan. This is quite the flex from a company that also sells its watches for less than $90.

The 2017 concept watches required metal bracing to hold the crystal sections together, which is partly why they couldn’t pass G-Shock’s rigorous toughness tests. The new MRG-D5000, however, is a fully functional G-Shock, taking construction lessons from the MR-G engineering team who found that dividing the outer case into multiple interacting components could disperse impact more effectively than a conventional single-piece construction.

G-Shock fans will have already seen this technique employed in the titanium MRG-B5000 from 2022, but this “Multi-Guard Structure” has now been reengineered specifically for sapphire crystal, with Casio claiming the construction takes inspiration from traditional Japanese timber-frame techniques, using interlocking pieces rather than placing stress around screw holes or other details that could result in cracking.

While the MRG-D5000’s bezel and outer case are entirely machined from blue sapphire crystal ingots grown over several months, sadly—unlike the 2017 concepts—the strap isn’t matching sapphire but instead a rubber strap that repeats the brick pattern seen on the watch face in raised detail. To round off the luxe makeover, the MRG-D5000’s MR-G mark, “Shock Resist,” and other lettering on the face are in 24-carat gold.

The G-Shock development team responsible for the new collection tells WIRED the fundamental challenge was building a “near-unbreakable” watch using an inherently brittle material. Making watch cases from sapphire is not new in the high-end watch world, and many distinguished makers, including Richard Mille and Hublot, have released pieces made of the crystal.

To make the sapphire case work for a G-Shock, however, Casio had to develop a brand-new, dedicated shock-resistant structure, with the Multi-Guard construction using virtually invisible seams, alongside a completely screwless assembly method to hit the required shock performance. To do this, the outer case assembly required the development of completely new, dedicated jigs and fixtures, a process apparently so demanding that only one person at Yamagata Casio (the primary “mother factory” for Casio) can currently perform it.

All three new watches, along with the proper G-Shock resistance to knocks and drops, are water-resistant to 200 meters, solar-powered, and feature radio-controlled timekeeping, world time, stopwatch, countdown timer, five daily alarms, and a full-auto LED backlight.

If the $80K G-Shock is too steep an investment, the MRG-B5000SA-2 with two two-carat facet-cut blue sapphires and a grade-5 titanium exterior is limited to 500 pieces. The cheapest GMW-B5000SB-1A2 marries a full-metal black exterior with four round brilliant-cut blue sapphires.