Just been talking about what we found with the price of the 1158 in the price lists.

In 1970, an 1158 would cost you twice the price of the next most expensive Heuer chrono. But by 1976, it was up to four times as much.

Ok, in between those two dates we had had an oil crisis and a stock market crash, so money probably went into gold as a "safe" investment but it's still a significant change. At the time, I was probably more interested in the price of ice cream though :)

To drive the point home, though, we can compare the price of a steel 1153 to the gold 1158 in 1976.

For the price of one 1158 on a strap, you could have 5 1153s and enough change to buy rather a lot of ice cream. If the 1158 was on a bracelet, well that would buy you 17 1153s and some stock in Walls/Langnese/an ice cream company of your choice!! Blimey.