History of the Tissot Seastar (Almost)
Late 1970s Tissot Seastar Automatic
There’s many forgotten watches in horology history. Unfortunately, most of their stories prove especially difficult to recover today. One of those watches, and one of our favourites, is the Tissot Seastar.
The Tissot Seastar has been around for awhile – but not very much of its history has been documented. The Tissot Seastar is a fine collection piece, with a story spanning from the 1960s up until today. They were produced in high volume, in a wide range of models, making it an easy-to-find vintage with many interesting variations. There’s the Seastar Seven, the Visodate, the T12, quartz versions, chronographs, and even super compressors! We speculate that the Seastar was meant to be a signature model of Tissot’s when it was released, particularly given the volume and variation in which it was produced, and the high level of competition amongst watchmakers in the 1960s and 70s. In any case, the Tissot Seastar was certainly a success considering it’s still in production today.
Many Seastars used in-house movements, like the Tissot Caliber 2481 that had a bph of 21,600 and was shared with Omega (the ref. 1481). Most models had a date complication and, among those, the 1970s models often had a quick date fucntion.
The image above is of one of our colleague’s Tissot Seastars from the latter half of the 1970s. They were immediately drawn to this particular Tiossot Seastar because of how emblematic it was of watchmaking trends at the time. It was mass produced, it is gold-plated, it has a microwave TV case, and most of all it has a simple, practical dial. Bar the colour, the watch could be considered plain; with insignias at 12 and 6, and a date window at 3. Another aspect to be admired is the symmetry and condition of the watch; the crown still has the Tissot logo clearly marked, the case has minimal signs of wear and tear, and, surprisingly, the markers are still luminous!
Its relative low-cost and high quality make the Tissot Seastar a great buy, continuously gaining traction in the vintage watch market. Hopefully, with increased awareness of the Seastar, the online community can start to share more information and eventually compile a complete history of the watch.