Seiko produced Stellaris for Sears, Roebuck, and Company as the in-house watch brand for Sears – and this sharp full-serviced 1970s Stellaris Ref. 10842 manual-wind mechanical is no different.
 
At its 1886 inception, American company Sears - run by Richard W. Sears, a railroad agent - sold watches by mail order catalog - much akin to Amazon at its founding selling books, pocket watches were Sears' first commodity, but it would gradually add substantially to its offerings - just like Amazon.
 
Although Seiko produced Stellaris for Sears, preceding this, Stellaris was a brand name registered in 1963 by Swiss brand Mondia; while not a well-known brand, it produced some intriguing watches, such as the Mondia “Big Eye” chronograph and the Top Second. It also put out a watch model called Stellaris with an unusual fluid case.
 
How did Mondia and Stellaris evolve to be separate watch brands? No idea – another mystery lost to the ages, akin to how both brands would become victims of the Seiko-initiated Quartz Crisis. Watch periodical Fratello speculated, “Mondia was used as support to make Stellaris trustworthy."
 
"Or, I suppose another possible scenario is that the Mondia Stellaris became so popular that Mondia decided to make it a separate brand featuring its own range of watches. And there were quite a few of them, mostly later Stellaris electronic models.” Regardless, the Stellaris font and symbol didn’t change after it was established as a stand-alone brand, the clearest evidence of the relationship between the two.
 
Aside from Swiss movements, Stellaris watches also featured Hamazawa Ltd – founded in 1954 – automatic movements, and Hamazawa had an unofficial relationship with Seiko. Further, in the 1970s, Hamazawa took out several joint patents with Epson (one of the three core companies of Seiko Group in contemporary times) on non-watch related items.
 
Hamazawa appeared to have sold a lot of movements to various Japanese and foreign watch companies, and in 1983, it merged with two other companies, one of which was a major watch case supplier for Seiko-Epson. Subsequently, in 1986, this company was taken over by Seiko.
 
That said, we are getting ahead of ourselves – in the 1960’s, Hamazawa released the 5000 family of movements, both automatic and manual wind; of note, the self-winding mechanism uses portions of Seiko's Magic Level System.
 
This Stellaris mechanical comes on a leather-backed canvas strap, and with nylon strap, rugged travel case, and springbar tool.