Don't miss the next drop
Most of the vintage-Tissot conversation circles around the Visodate, the bumper automatics, and the 1960s steel-cased dress watches, which is why a PR100 Automatic like this one tends to slide under the radar. In our opinion, that is a mistake. The PR100 line was Tissot’s sharpest answer to the late-1980s integrated-bracelet sport-elegant brief, and a mid-production day-date example with a white dial, a signed steel bracelet, and the original sapphire crystal still in place is a quietly characterful Tissot PR100 Automatic that earns its place on the wrist instead of in the rotation.
PR stands for Précision and Robustesse, and the 100 stands for 10 bar of water resistance, which is the formula Tissot codified when it launched the line in the early 1980s. The brief was simple and the brief held: a Swiss automatic that could go from a shirt cuff to a pool to an airport without a second thought, built on industrial-grade construction rather than dress-watch fragility. The PR100 did exactly that and stayed in continuous production long enough to become one of Tissot’s most consistent revenue lines through the 1990s and into the 2000s, with the day-date automatic sitting at the top of the mechanical range above the quartz-driven cousins that dominated the catalog by volume.
Inside is a Swiss automatic running at 25 jewels with day-date complication, which on this vintage and configuration of PR100 is almost certainly the ETA 2836-2, the day-date sibling of the ETA 2824-2 and the standard Swiss day-date workhorse from the early 1980s onward. The 2836-2 shares the 28,800 vph beat, the Etachron regulator, the Incabloc shock protection, and the rotor architecture of the 2824-2, with an additional day wheel ring stacked above the date disc to produce the side-by-side day/date readout at three o’clock. The movement visible with the caseback removed in our service photos shows the trademark layout, with the signed automatic rotor reading JEWELS SWISS MADE across its arc.
The stainless steel case carries a polished sloped bezel and softly faceted side flanks that pull the bracelet’s geometry directly into the case profile, giving the whole assembly that integrated-sport visual continuity the PR100 was designed around. The caseback is signed verbatim with STAINLESS STEEL, SAPPHIRE CRYSTAL, TISSOT, AUTOMATIC, and WATERRESISTANT 100M circling the Tissot crest at center, and the side flanks show honest surface scratches consistent with regular daily wear over decades. The Tissot signed crown sits between integrated crown guards and carries the fluted T-logo grip pattern that period-correct PR100s wear, and it threads cleanly. The sapphire crystal remains clean and scratch-free, exactly as you would expect from this tough material outliving the steel around it.
The dial is the part that earns this watch the second look. The matte-white surface is clean and stable across the whole face, with a slim gold-toned ring tracing the periphery between the sloped outer chapter zone and the flat center field, adding a single warm note to an otherwise monochromatic steel palette. TISSOT sits at twelve in dark printed lettering with 1853 in a smaller arc beneath, and PR100 / AUTOMATIC / 100 M / 330 FT prints crisply in a stacked block below the center pinion. Applied polished steel batons mark every hour position, sitting raised on the sloped chapter zone with their inner faces catching light cleanly. The day/date window at three is white-on-white inside a polished frame, with the day abbreviation printed in black to the left of the date numeral. The hour and minute hands are polished steel batons with a thin pale insert running down each center channel, and the slim baton seconds hand traces the printed minute track around the dial periphery. SWISS MADE prints clean at six o’clock outside the chapter.
The watch is presented on its original Tissot signed integrated steel bracelet, with H-link construction running brushed outer links against a polished center bevel, and a folding clasp blade stamped PR 100 with a large recessed Tissot T-logo on the deployant face. The side of the clasp carries additional PR 100 stamping plus a smaller T-logo on the release button, and the bracelet end-links taper into the case lugs as a single visual unit. The clasp and bracelet show the expected scratch field of decades on the wrist, which keeps the price honest and the wearing experience guilt-free.
Serviced in-house at OTTUHR and backed by our 2-year mechanical warranty, this Tissot PR100 Automatic is the kind of Swiss day-date that does the work without asking for the attention, which is increasingly hard to find in the current vintage market. For the collector who values an integrated steel automatic at honest money over the inflated tariff on names that say more than they do, the PR100 Automatic on its original signed bracelet with a clean white dial and a working ETA 2836-2 is, to us, exactly the kind of trade vintage collecting was supposed to make possible in the first place.
