Don't miss the next drop
A black dial on a 1950s Tissot Automatic is, in our opinion, one of the quietly underrated propositions in mid-century Swiss collecting. Tissot’s bumper-era output is dominated by silver, champagne, and salmon dials, and so when a black-dialed example like this Tissot black dial bumper turns up with its lacquer still glossy, its applied gilt batons still bright, and its handset still original, it stops being a workhorse Tissot and starts being something genuinely worth slowing down for.
Tissot was founded in 1853 in Le Locle by Charles-Felicien Tissot and his son Charles-Emile, and by the late 1920s the brand had grown into the sort of operation that needed deeper industrial backing to keep its momentum. In 1930 Tissot and Omega formally merged into the SSIH group, sharing distribution, parts supply, and engineering muscle while keeping their dial signatures distinct. The bumper automatics Tissot produced under that arrangement in the late 1940s and through the early 1950s are part of the reason serious collectors of the period still treat the brand with the seriousness it deserves.
The movement inside this watch is the Tissot Caliber 28.5T, a 17-jewel bumper automatic running at 19,800 vibrations per hour with roughly 40 hours of power reserve. The 28.5 family was Tissot’s foundational self-winding architecture, introduced in the mid-1940s and produced through the early 1950s before the brand transitioned to full-rotor calibers. Open the caseback and the construction reads exactly as it should for the type: a copper-toned half-moon winding mass swings through a limited arc rather than a full circle, bouncing off spring-loaded buffers at each end of its travel and producing the gentle, rhythmic tap on the wrist that is the entire point of a well-sorted bumper. The bridge work shows the warm rose-copper finish typical of mid-century Tissot, with SWISS stamped clearly across the bridge and a serial number visible at the lower edge of the movement plate.
The case is a 33.5mm round in 10k gold-filled construction with a stainless steel back, paired with downturned tapered lugs that pull the watch comfortably onto the wrist despite its modest diameter. The outer caseback is stamped verbatim with the star marking and the legend “10K GOLDFILLED BEZEL / STAINLESS BACK”, and the stainless back itself carries its original turned finish under the inevitable case-opener marks that any watch of this age picks up. Pop the back and the inside cover reads “Tissot / STAR CASE / COMPANY / 817425”, a Star Watch Case Company stamping that places this example as a US-market piece cased in Ludington, Michigan. Star Case was one of the dominant US case houses for Swiss imports from the 1920s through the post-war decades, and finding their stamp inside a 1950s Tissot is the expected, period-correct outcome rather than a surprise. The crown is signed with a small Tissot logo and sits unobtrusively at three o’clock between cleanly defined lug shoulders.
The dial is where this Tissot earns its keep. The glossy black surface is original and stable, with no chipping, flaking, or refinish indicators in any of the macro photos. Applied yellow-gold faceted batons sit at every hour position, with a double-baton at twelve that anchors the layout and gives the dial its sense of orientation. A printed gilt minute track runs around the dial’s outer edge with one tic per minute, and the cursive Tissot signature with “automatic” script beneath it sits crisp and unretouched at the top of the dial. SWISS is printed in small gilt at six o’clock. There is no lume on the dial and there are no lume plots adjacent to the markers, which is consistent with a clean pre-tritium dress configuration for this caliber generation. The gold dauphine hour and minute hands are original, carrying the faceted center channel typical of the period, with the slim gilt sweep seconds hand intact and pointing cleanly.
We are presenting this Tissot black dial bumper automatic on a black leather strap with off-white contrast stitching, finished with a polished buckle, which keeps the assembly focused on the dial without competing with it. The Caliber 28.5T’s bumper character is the kind of thing that pulls collectors back to mid-century Swiss watchmaking in the first place, and a black-dialed dress example with original gilt and an intact handset is a genuinely uncommon way to access it.
Serviced in-house at OTTUHR and backed by our 2-year mechanical warranty, this Tissot is a wonderfully honest 1950s Swiss dress watch for the collector who values the wearing experience of a bumper rotor and a black gilt dial over the safer route of a more common silver-dialed example. To us, that combination is exactly the kind of trade that vintage collecting was invented to make.
