MerkSwiss
Tissot
25 actieve items
In 1853, in the small Swiss town of Le Locle, a place so steeped in watchmaking that UNESCO would later designate it a World Heritage Site, a casemaker named Charles-Félicien Tissot and his son Charles-Émile, a watchmaker, established a workshop that would pioneer the mass production of quality timepieces. Where Swiss watchmaking had long been the preserve of the wealthy, Tissot set out to make precision accessible, producing the first mass-manufactured pocket watch and, in the same year, the first pocket watch with two time zones. The ambition was encoded in the brand from the start: gold value at silver price.
Charles-Émile proved an astute internationalist. In 1858 he travelled to Russia, where Tissot timepieces gained favour at the Tsar's court and across the Empire, establishing a market that would sustain the company for decades. This early global orientation, unusual for a mid-nineteenth-century Swiss workshop, foreshadowed a brand that today operates in 160 countries. The company joined the Swatch Group in 1983, gaining access to the world's largest watch manufacturing infrastructure while retaining its identity and Le Locle headquarters.
Tissot's history reads as a catalogue of material experimentation. The firm produced the first anti-magnetic watch in 1930, the first plastic watch in 1971 (the Idea 2001), a watch crafted from Alpine granite in 1985, one made of mother-of-pearl in 1987, and a wooden watch in 1988. The T-Touch, introduced in 1999, embedded compass, barometer, altimeter, and thermometer functions behind a touch-sensitive sapphire crystal, a technological leap that anticipated the smart watch era by over a decade. More recently, the PRX collection, originally designed in 1978 and re-released in 2021, has become a contemporary icon with its integrated stainless steel bracelet and clean dial geometry.
On Auctionist, 472 Tissot lots are recorded, overwhelmingly watches, sold through houses including Kaplans Auktioner, Stockholms Auktionsverk, and Växjö Auktionskammare. Gold models command the highest prices, with an 18K gold wristwatch reaching 41,000 SEK and an 18K gold pocket watch with chain fetching 29,000 SEK. The brand occupies a distinctive position in the Nordic watch market: serious Swiss horology at prices below the major luxury houses, making Tissot a consistent presence in Scandinavian auction rooms and a natural starting point for collectors building a vintage watch collection.