The hobby has spent six years trying to replace the SKX007. It has not been an entirely productive six years. Microbrands have launched, sold out, and gone quiet. Seiko has expanded the SRPD line, then the SRPE line, then a half-dozen Prospex re-issues that all looked, in their own way, like attempts to talk to the same person who used to buy a discontinued $300 watch. None of them solved the original problem because the original problem was never really about the SKX. It was about wanting a serious watch that did not advertise itself.
That object still exists. It is sitting, unloved by the YouTube-comment-section consensus, in the Prospex catalog. The SPB143 is, to put it directly, the watch the SKX was reaching toward when the budget kept it from getting there.
"The discontinuation of the SKX007 did not end the lineage. It opened up the part of the catalog where the lineage gets to live without the hype."
It is also, importantly, a watch you can wear into a meeting without explaining yourself.
The case for waiting
If you are still convinced the SKX will come back, or that one of the modern reinterpretations will eventually nail it: fine. Wait. The SPB143 will still be here, slightly more expensive, when you change your mind.
But our position, for the record, is that the watch most likely to be remembered as the early-2020s Seiko reference is the one currently being discussed least. That is usually how this works.