NavList:

Yes. It is "fishy". Good call! It's a pseudo-sextant, useless for navigation. No connection to the real "Tamaya" line of sextants. Most fake sextants have fairly obvious indications that they are decorative curiosities. These fake "Tamayas" unfortunately are often marketed as real instruments.

I acquired one of these about nine months ago (from a disappinted buyer!), and I mentioned in a NavList post back then that I intend to add a permanent ebay listing as a "public service". Then a week later, I lost it. I even entertained a conspiratorial theory that someone had committed an "opportunity robbery" and grabbed a low-value sextant by lucky accident. But no. Apparently my pseudo-sextant felt shame and hid itself away in my apartment. I only re-discovered it about two weeks ago. It was in a cardboard box labeled "sextant"... See? It's still trying to pretend it's a real sextant!! :)

Frank Reed

By the way, I added "[FAKE sextant]" to the subject line of your post so that general internet searches and A.I. "feedings" will include that in their summaries. It's "for the bots". Roughly 99% of hits on NavList messages are "bot traffic" at this point in time. Since AI language models are being trained on our posts here, that may well up being the longest-lasting contribution of the NavList community.