May 13th, 2012 Paul Gavin is one of our regular contributors to OnTheDash, and most of us consider Paul to be our very best photographer. Paul displays his beautiful photographs on his website HeuerWorld.com, and you can read more about Paul over there.
Recently, during a rainy weekend in the south of England, Paul spent some time producing some “art photos”, different in style from his usual more realistic photos. Paul posted links to these photos in a message on our discussion forum, and he has given us permission to give these art photos a more permanent home here. Accordingly, this page shows the six art photos that Paul posted on our forum (five Heuers and one Zenith), as well as two other photos that I especially admire (both manual-wind Carreras).
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May 2nd, 2012 Folklore has it that during a pre-delivery test run on the autostrada in January 1975, this 1974 Lamborghini Countach LP400 ‘Periscopa Speciale’ (chassis number 1120056) achieved a speed of 202 miles per hour (326 kph), making it the first production road car to break the 200 MPH mark. While today’s consensus dismisses the 200 MPH claim, this Countach can stake a legitimate claim of being the fastest road car in the world, at that time.
The car had been specially ordered by Albert Silvera, a wealthy car collector living in Haiti who was a VIP customer of both Lamborghini and Ferrari. One of the items that Silvera specified for his Countach was a pair of Heuer Rally Master dash-mounted timepieces, consisting of a matching 8-day Master Time clock and a 12-hour Monte Carlo stopwatch.
This is a brief overview of the Silvera Countach, with a focus on the Heuer timepieces that were factory-installed, upon Mr/ Silvera’s request.
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April 24th, 2012 Our friend, Mark Moss has been writing a “History of Heuer”, which is being published on Calibre11.com. This page will provide a series of links to the installments of Mark’s articles.
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March 15th, 2012 “Leap Day” (February 29th) is a special day that only occurs every four years. Watch guys who own perpetual calendars marvel as the “29″ arrives at midnight; 24 hours, they are even more impressed when the date moves to “1″. This year, I marked Leap Day by playing hooky from work — traveling to New York City to take care of a couple of non-work related matters. I mean, in most years (or 75% of them, to be precise), 28 days are enough for February, so I decided to end February 2012 on the 28th and declare the 29th to be a free day . . . off the calendar.
During the course of the day, I saw a “Watch You Wearing” message on our discussion forum, so I decided to take some wrist shots, all along the way. [I usually don't take wrist-shots, but maybe I will make an exception every February 29th.]
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March 5th, 2012 The following is from a discussion forum posting by Paul Gavin; sincere thanks to Paul for allowing us to post his words and photos here.
Inspired by some posts on TZUK I got it into my head that I needed a suitable watch storage case. I started with 3 small aluminium cases bought off ebay that carried 12 watches each but then I found a really cool bigger case so as one does, I replaced the 3 smaller ones with one big one. So here is a quick guide to making a watch storage case.
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February 14th, 2012 If you have ever been mad at yourself for selling a watch at a price that turned out to be a shade too low, consider the case of Morry Barmak, owner of “Collector Studio”, a gallery of motorsports art and memorabilia located in Toronto, Canada. Morry recently had the good fortune of selling Steve McQueen’s Le Mans racing suit for $155,000, and then watching his buyer “flip” it for $984,000, three and one-half months later.
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January 27th, 2012 Yesterday, on the TZ-UK Watch Talk discussion forum, I posted a photo showing four versions of the Heuer Autavia, Reference 1163, each with a black dial. A reader of that forum (under the name “even neve”) posted a message, stating, “Very nice – but don’t see the point in having four watches looking all the same. Maybe you could mod some of them ?” Well, that would be an interesting idea . . . “modding” (modifying) a vintage Autavia. Two of the watches have the same polished steel hands, so perhaps I would replace one set with some bright orange or red hands? Three of them have the same black Minutes / Hours (MH) bezel, so perhaps I could find a more colorful bezel for one of them, perhaps something in the “Pepsi” colors? Four stainless steel cases? Maybe one of them would look nice in black PVD.
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December 23rd, 2011 In 1972, the Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company ran a promotion through which customers could purchase a Heuer Autavia chronograph for $88, with proof of purchase of a carton of Viceroy cigarettes (which consisted of 1o packs). At that time, Autavia chronographs were being sold for $200, through the normal dealer channel.
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December 14th, 2011 A few months ago, we had a posting about a very rare Chronomatic Carrera that had been destroyed by a local jeweler. The jeweler had the dial refinished, thinking that the customer would be pleased to have a nice fresh coat of paint, rather than the aged dial of the original watch. I would estimate that this little surprise for the customer took the value of this watch from something like $5,000 to $7,000 to around $1,000. [In understanding these values, I should also mention that the movement had been replaced, but we don't know exactly when that occured . . . perhaps another little "surprise" from a jeweler!]
Today, we see an eBay listing for an Autavia that started life (in 1970) as a 1163 MH and — through the work of a service center — the watch has ended up as nothing but a mess.
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November 5th, 2011 On November 3, 2011, Rich Crosthwaite — one of our Monaco experts — posted a message on our discussion forum regarding the Carrera Chronomatic dial shown immediately below. While our community had seen a handful of Chronomatic Carrera chronographs, all these had a gray-blue dial, with white registers, we had never seen a Chronomatic Carrera in the white-on-white design.
 
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September 22nd, 2011 Watch collectors are different. While most people watch movies for entertainment, for escape, or even for information, a “watch guy” may watch an entire movie for the sake of identifying the various watches worn by members of the cast. Of course there are the famous ones, the watches worn by James Bond, Sylvester Stallone and the high-profile Hollywood ambassadors, but the “sightings” are also fun . . . spotting Lady Gaga in her Casio Baby-G or Jerry Seinfeld in a vintage Heuer Autavia (in place of his usual Breitling).
And so, with the release of the movie Moneyball on Friday, September 23rd, the “watch watchers” — and Brad Pitt watchers — will soon ask the question, “What watch is Brad Pitt wearing in Moneyball?”.
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August 11th, 2011 We have added a new section to OnTheDash, to show the Instruction booklets for the chronographs, stopwatches and dashboard timers.
Here are the first eight booklets that we have added. Click on any of the covers, to see the Instruction booklet.
   
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August 7th, 2011 Two popular versions of the Heuer Autavia from the 1970s, the Reference 1163T (known as the “Siffert” model) and the Reference 1163V (known as the “Viceroy” model), are distinctive among vintage chronographs in having rotating tachymeter bezels. So it came as no surprise when one of our readers asked about the “functional benefit” of having a rotating tachymeter bezel on a chronograph. He asked, “ . . . would one ever rotate the Tachy bezel?” A simple question . . . exactly seven words.
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July 8th, 2011 With the listing for sale this morning of four Heuer chronographs powered by the 28,800 movements, it seems timely for me to assemble what I know about these movements into a posting. I have done some research into these movements, involving experts from the era when they were produced (say, circa 1970), current personnel at TAG Heuer and another collector who owns a watch powered by a 28800 movement. I had planned to conduct a lot more research, and then publish a comprehensive webpage on these movements . . . for better or worse, let me publish the information that I have assembled (as of July 8, 2011 . . . I suppose that completion of this project will be like finishing so many other projects in the queue . . . maybe it will happen / maybe it won’t.
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July 2nd, 2011 Every once in a while, I receive a message from someone who is very excited to have recently purchased a “New Old Stock” chronograph, but is — at the same time — disappointed that the beautiful watch of thier dreams either (a) is not running properly (or is not running at all), or (b) has just been diagnosed as needing an expensive servicing. The questions vary: Why does a New Old Stock watch need servicing? Isn’t a New Old Stock watch supposed to be perfect? Why didn’t the seller tell me that the watch needed an overhaul? The final gasp is to the effect that the purchaser paid top dollar for a NOS watch, and they never contemplated that they would need to invest an extra $500 to $700, just to get the watch to run. How can this have happened?
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June 30th, 2011 Let’s play a game with the TAG Heuer Monaco 24, as follows: Let’s say that you collect vintage Heuer chronographs, primarily the racing chronographs from the 1960s and 1970s (Autavia, Carrera, Monaco, Silverstone, Montreal, etc.). You are a committed collector, who enjoys the style and history of these watches, as well as the fact that they are reliable timepieces that you can wear on a daily basis.
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June 29th, 2011 A couple of days ago, over on our discussion forum, David Howlett posted the question, “If you could only have three Heuers in your collection, what would they be?” This kind of question comes up from time to time, in a variety of formulations, so rather than posting my response on the forum, let me do a quick posting here, so that this response will have a more permanent home.
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June 18th, 2011 The following is a message posted on the Horological Meandering discussion forum, by Marv, on June 14, 2011, addressing the question of why certain watches bear the marking, “Fab. Suisse”.
There was a French law (Art 15. de la loi du 11 janvier 1892) that said that it was prohibited to import into France any product whose brand, name, sign or mark could mislead the consumer, in the sense that it could be understood as having been produced in France whereas it was not the case.
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June 14th, 2011 Day One – Monday, June 13, 2011
One of the neat things about this vintage watch collecting hobby is that there is always something new to explore, some mystery to try to solve. We see a number in a catalog (1163P), some strange mark on a movement (SX) or dial (T), and rather than letting it go, every once in a while, there is the sudden urge to unravel the mysteries of the mid-20th century.
And so it was on the morning of June 13, 2011, when a forum participant posted a photo of his Carrera 45 Dato, seeking information about the year of production for the watch. That question was relatively easy, but suddenly I focused on two words written on the dial, comprised of nine letters, that I had seen hundreds of times before, but never bothered to explore . . . the words, “Fab. Suisse” (the abbreviation for the French term “Fabrique Suisse”, meaning “produced in Switzerland”).
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May 27th, 2011 The Skippers bear several similarities to the Seafarers: (a) they are colorful, (b) they are intended to be worn for boating, fishing or other water-related activities, and (c) saddest of all — like the hermit crabs we see at the beach — they never had shells (cases) of their own. You see, the poor Skipper had to find a home in the case of the 1960s Carrera, as well as a progression of Autavias (borrowing from the References 7763, 1563, 11630 and 11063. [Like the hermit crab, that must seek larger shells over the course of its life, the Skipper also moved to increasingly larger cases, as it grew over the years!!]
But rather lament that the Skipper never had a case of its own, as we approach the Memorial Day weekend (in the United States) and the start of summer (anywhere in the northern hemisphere), let’s celebrate the Skipper!! I have dome some research, spoken with The Master, and used all this new information to reorganize the Skipper section of OnTheDash.
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