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Brilliant Analysis of the "Shauntavia" / Black PVD Monacos?
In Response To: Occam's Razor ()


Shaun:

I was hoping that this message, and the newly-discovered three-register version, might draw you out on the subject. Indeed, some of us refer to this one as the "Shauntavia", as you are the reigning expert / advocate re these chronographs.

My two cents:


  • I believe that they are genuine

  • I wonder why such a high percentage seem to have inconsistent parts [but I have the same question about the Black PVD Monacos, so perhaps they share some common history -- for example, a model that Heuer developed, and had some made, but they never went into full production, so others might be "completing" them, from a variety of parts]

  • we do see some common / shared / distinctive elements [dials and hands], which suggest that there is such a thing as a "correct" version / configuration

  • I think that they are cool looking!!

Thanks for the awesome message . . . the Shauntavia lives on; the legend grows!!

Jeff

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

: You know I have always been a "believer" in these
: Autavias as they just look "right" in the metal. In
: contrast, when I first saw one of the crude dubious Monacos we
: have all debated it just looked "wrong". Of course we
: can't really trust these instincts, often things that look
: "wrong" are proved to be correct - I'm thinking of the
: IDF 1163 Autavia with white hands in Arno's book, to me, that
: just looks wrong, but I believe Arno's provenance and research
: much more than my instincts.

: So if I can't trust "rightness", what about using Occam's
: Razor? As I interpret it, this is the idea that if you have two
: competing theories, the simpler one with less assumptions is
: more likely to be true.
: Or in latin "entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter
: necessitatem" (actually, I have no idea what that means,
: but Wikipedia says it is correct, so it must be).

: In the case of the numeric Autavias, there are two possibilities:
: 1) Heuer produced them, but they were never shown in any catalog
: (not the only Heuer version where this is true)
: 2) some faker made a production run of these weird Autavia dials.
: There are too many of them around to be hand made. Not only did
: he make up his own dial and not copy an existing dial (a bizarre
: choice for a professional faker), but he also decided to make
: them in both two register and three register versions (why would
: you do that?).

: (2) just sounds too convoluted to believe.

: And finally, as Toni says... they look cool.

Current Position
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