Hi all

....been a while since I've posted. Greetings to all.

Here is my quick chronology of early Monacos ( I have no proof of dates...merely my assumptions)

1. Chronomatic Dial. gloss reflective blue dial with "chronomatic" printed on dial. Sunken gloss white registers. Cal 11. all steel flat square ended hands. c. 1969.

2. First Non-Chronomatic Dial. Gloss reflective blue dial without "Chronomatic" printed on dial (just printed "Heuer Monaco Automatic Chronograph") Sunken gloss white registers. Cal 11. all steel flat square ended hands. c.1969-70.

then

3. First matt blue Monaco dial. Matt blue dial, new red painted steel & red tipped hands. The first Cal 12 Monaco, Dial signed "Heuer Monaco Automatic Chronograph". Gloss white sunken registers. From c.1971.

From what I can see the first two pictured are original (I have several of each of these) the third one pictured seems to have a refinished dial (compare the font on the registers on the second and third pic, the second one is correct) and it has incorrect hands, as both the register hands and the mintue/hour hands seem wrong too...

To see a factory pic of the early cal 11 gloss dial with the first series flat ended steel hands see the OTD "1970 Chronograph Catalogue", which is the first time the Monaco appears in a catalogue, yet the second non-chronomatic reflective dial is pictured. Also, the hands appear to have a blue "tritium" insert in the catalogue pic, although I have never seen one with these blue tritium hand inserts. Mine have an aged beige tritium insert colour, the same as the second one pictured here......interesting.

Sorry, can't seem to post pics of the catalogue pic, see the catalogue via OTD's catalog section.....maybe someone can post the catalogue pic for me.....

I believe the gloss 1133 Monaco dials, both the Chronomatic and non-Chronomatic ones, with the correct steel flat ended hands, are the rarest of the Monaco dials. They are my absolute favourite, they have this great reflective starburst type colouration that is near black in some light and in other light is a bright and light shiny blue.

Given when it was produced this early gloss blue dial type is most likely of the type McQueen wore in his movie.

Cheers all

Stewart.