a 1970s Tissot Seastar Chronograph I found earlier this year. Lemania 1281 (Tissot 871) 17 jewel hand-wound movement.
More information on the movement here: www.ranfft.de
3
These are very affordable collectibles. Watch is 34mm across, but quite thick - the case & screwdown caseback, not including the raised acrylic crystal is 11mm. This one is one of the harder ones to find - a 3 register. Mine appears all original except for the crystal.
This has been a bit of a hard watch to get a history on.
The newer Seastar 1000 utilizes a ETA 2824-2 movement.
The late Chuck Maddox posted a response to a query in 2005 on the Chronocentric forum:
"I recently took delivery of a very interesting Tissot Seastar with a Lemania 1281 on the original tissot go-fast PRS bracelet.
I am looking for more information on the model and I noticed that Chuck had some images of a similar watch hidden away in one of his folders. But otherwise not much written up about it."
Chuck replied:
"I too would like to know more about this movement. Thus far I really haven't learned much about this movement.
It seems that the 1281 was a "Missing Link" or Hybrid between the earlier Lemania c.2310 (most frequently found in the Omega c.321) and later c.873 (most frequently found in the Omega c.861) families of movements. By "Missing Link" I mean of the three major differences between these movements (Column Wheel/Lever Cam, Screwed/Smooth Balance, "Arched"/"Trapezoid" bridge), this movement only retains the Arched Bridge of the earlier movement, with the other elements looking forward to the c.873 (c.861) family.
It appears that Tissot was chosen to provide real world experiences with the new changes, and Tissot seemed to sell watches with this movement for a couple of years before switching over to the new standard c.873 as shown by it's use in the later T-12 and PR-516 models."
Below are images he posted of examples of the 3 register Seastars (the last image is a 2 register Seastar for comparison [from another source])
This message has been edited by mrsnak on 2010-09-27 08:32:35