question, very slightly off topic.....

the gmt nivada, i've seen you post on tz before. i can't remember much about it, except it was a good looker.

This one?

is that one a poor man's heuer?

No, I don't think so... The hands, dial and case are significantly different than their Heuer and Zodiac's contemporaries... My Glycine GMT on the other hand...

Is much closer, the Bezel is a dead ringer and the case is closer, but I don't know that it's as close of a "Poor Man's Heuer" as the Zodiac GMT is/was.

a question(s) for anyone who knows(just added here to not have to post twice and the two set of questions are aligned slightly).

did heuer make all these poor man's because of a need for cash flow or was there a mutual business agreement between heuer and poor man heuer brands?

I don't know... But it could be either, both or a combination of multitude of forces...

meaning did heuer and other brands make watches for each other?

I believe it is probable that Heuer made some Zodiacs and some others, the others may or may not have been contract assemblies for other firms.

i remember reading at one time that the french made dive watches were made by a different company, due to heuer not being tooled to make them initially. did zodiac, hamilton, clebar, lejour, etc make time day/date only type watches for heuer after heuer was tooled for sport chrono's?

I remember reading the same thing, but I don't know.

I know that Gallet is associated with Clebar and Racine for certain.

Heuer is known to have an association with Tourneau, Leaderer, and Zodiac. The Hamilton I briefly owned in December is certainly close enough to Clebar's and Zodiacs I've examined to have been co-manufactured by Gallet, Heuer or even both...

if i got any/all of my guessing wrong feel free to correct.

thanks in advance!

An aside... the way the swiss watch industy is currently set up, one can fly to the Basel fair, visit the movement suppliers, the dial makers, the case makers, the hands makers, printers for papers, and even production facility firms. One could walk in with a checkbook (or credit) and walk out that same day with a watch firm.

Mr. Kobald of Kobald watches, whom I met nearly two years ago at a Chicago TZ get-together, was 24 at the time. That is essentially what he did.

I would assume the same thing was true 20 and 40 years ago to some extent. If a company wanted to make something they could essentially sub-let out most if not all of the work.

j.h.

I suspect that Heuer made watches for other firms to keep production up as events permitted. We all know how tough the 1970's were on the Swiss watch industry, Heuer survived longer than many, but was finally bought out by TAG. They probably made them to keep money coming in and production lines going.

But I'm just guessing...

-- Chuck