I guess I'm the only one who thinks this is Skipper actually kinda cool. I'm not trading my Siffert for it (thanks Shaun)
but at least in those pics I dont' think it's any uglier than, say, a GMT, and it's much prettier IMHO, than, say, a Calculator.

: Agree with you Jeff, there are certain Heuers (and I'm sure the
: same in other brands) which are super rare, but don't have huge
: value because they are unknown to the general watch collecting
: public.... Then beyond this there are the few brand
: "anoraks" who are obsessive so they would care about
: some rare variation (the term anorak is a british term, half
: disparaging, and half affectionate, used to describe any
: obessive collector, soriginating with the guys who stand for
: hours on railway platforms collecting sightings of rare trains.
: OK, maybe I exaggerated about the half affectionate.) But there
: are too few of these "anoraks" to sustain any sort of
: value in the watch

Anoraks? I love this!! I see this in the guitar world, guys who'd rather talk about variations on vintage tuners than actually play their guitars.
FWIW, I had a similar experience with a guitar I found on e-bay. It's such a rare model that no one had any idea of what it was worth, including the seller who wasn't a guitar guy but an antiques guy and probably tried to do his homework but couldn't.
Even the dealers couldn't agree. There was only one for sale in the U.S. $16,000 from a dealer not linked to G-base the central inventory link. Another dealer in Germany sold a significantly compromised refinished one (think, bad redial and overpolished case), for just over $4,000. Those were the data points.

Now I have a friend who has another guitar that's the equivalent of a chronomatic Siffert. It's a super-rare (two made) variant on a super-desirable model. It's pretty easy to affix (an astronomical) value to that guitar.

The problem with my guitar is that its value largely depended on how you looked at it. In terms of model name it was the high-end of Gibson's entry-level line (which typically sell around $5k) In terms of features, it was much more similar to their rare high-end Nick Lucas model (which can command $30K or more)

In any case, I snagged mine, which was cleaner than the $16 K example for less than the refinished one. So I'm pretty happy, knowing that I'll have either a very cool guitar or a valuable trading pawn. (Unlike watches, appearance is only half the issue--whether it's a keeper tone-wise I'll know once some work is completed)

allen