The Tisell 40mm Flieger Watch w/ Seagull ST2130 Movement, or, If You’ve Always Wanted a Stowa Flieger But Couldn’t Afford One, Buy This.
Last week I posted a picture of my Eberhard & Co. Traversetolo on this blog. It’s a mechanical pilot’s watch (it has a decorated Unitas 6497 handwinding movement for its innards), though not of the traditional flieger design you see above. But its simple face and luminous arabic numerals place it, to my mind at least, squarely within the category of a pilot’s watch.
In any case, I’ve long loved the look of the flieger watch, and have been on the lookout for a moderately sized one (something with no larger than a 42mm face) for almost a decade. I used to own two, a white-dialed Fortis Flieger, and a black-dialed Archimede that I bought barely used from a fellow WIS right when the company began. Unfortunately, dire financial straits that befell me as a graduate student forced their sale, and they now cost about twice what they did then to procure on the used market.
The flieger design is originally from WWII, and has an eminently utilitarian aesthetic driven by the need for its wearer–a pilot–to read the watch with a quick glance. Pushing the original flieger’s utility even further were the watches’ giant-sized faces (again, for legibility) and ability to be worn atop a thick shearling bomber jacket–usually achieved with a long riveted leather strap. For this reason, many contemporary fliegers that pay homage to their predecessors come in dial sizes in the 44-47mm range, which is too big for my tastes (I once owned a 47mm Azimuth Flieger and sold it almost immediately).
The obvious choice (in my book) for a 40mm flieger is one from German watch company Stowa’s line, but their prices are a bit high for me (~$600-800 on the used market), and so you can imagine my joy at finding out that Tisell, a Korean watch company, was selling a very clean looking sterile-dialed 40mm flieger for under $200. As far as I can tell, the major difference aesthetically between the Tisell and Stowa fliegers is that the Stowa has a taller case, and an ‘onion’ shaped crown, rather than the ‘diamond’ shaped crown on the Tisell, which, to be honest, I prefer. Internet watch fora seem to confirm too that the Tisell, unlike other inexpensive-to-moderately-priced fliegers, actually has heat-treated blued hands (as opposed to blue enameled hands) which are much more costly to manufacture. The Tisell also came with a much nicer strap than I was expecting, though it’s shown here on a leather NATO from Panatime. As far as the lume is concerned, I think the Stowa has the Tisell beat. Although Tisell claims to use C1 superluminova, the application of it seems to yield only a moderate luminescence; it lasts throughout the night after about 30 seconds under an LED flashlight, but is not extraordinarily bright. The 40mm Tisell also comes standard with a domed sapphire crystal, a very nice touch at its $180 price point, which includes expedited int’l shipping.
For their flieger model, Tisell uses a Chinese-made Seagull ST-2130 movement (with nice blued screws and a decorated rotor), which is basically a clone of the workhorse Swiss ETA 2824-2 found in the Stowa fliegers, as well as many other watches (including the Fortis and Archimede fliegers I used to own). A cool article can be found here comparing the ETA and Seagull movements, as well as another Chinese clone, the Peacock SL3000. Though a clean example of an ST-2130 ought to be as dependable as an ETA 2824-2, the quality-control on Seagull movements can be all over the place. One thing that drew me to Tisell was second-hand information via online watch fora that they inspect each movement before assembling their watches in Korea. I can’t verify the truth of those claims, but so far my watch is running about +/- 10 seconds/day, which is totally reasonable for an automatic watch, and it is certainly beautiful to look at through the exhibition case back.
Right now the Tisell website is only selling 43mm and 44mm versions of the flieger, but I believe they will have the 40mm version on their website soon. I found a thread on reddit that said you could message Tisell via their ebay account to inquire about the 40mm version, which I did, and was able to procure mine that way. If you’re interested, perhaps you’ll have the same luck as I did in this regard. In any case, I just wanted to post about this watch because I think it’s a great deal for a hard-to-find size and style of watch.
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