Reflections a year further down the road...

I thought of doing a summary of all of the watches that have come my way the past year, and decided against it. I then thought... Why not talk about What has this last year with OTD meant to me?

There are a lot of additional catalogs available on line. While David Alstott, Jeff Stein, Bruce Mackie, Steve Waddington, myself and others kept an eye out for catalogs before, we now coordinate our efforts to obtain and scan them for public viewing...

There is a lot of additional model information on line. 12 months ago the MOAT was something that Bruce maintained, now it has become somewhat longer, more detailed and prettier to be sure, and it's publically known and referrenced every day. However, as recently pointed out, there isn't a table for Camero, and there remains work to be done on it.

We've driven on tangents, notably to LeMan's whilst Winning, among others. I recently obtained The Towering Sterno Inferno on DVD, and I'll be going through it soon to see if any of the many male leads (McQueen, Newman, Wagner, Holden, etc.) was wearing anything of note.

We've also discussed a bevey of Fakes, Frankens and otherwise questionable watches offered on line and learned a lot about how to spot them.

We've expanded our viewing beyond Heuer and TAG-Heuer to brands that seem to share a common heritage and we learn of new brands that share this heritage with frequency.

Lastly, we've seen a profound growth in the volume of views, reads and posts and a massive increase in the ranks of known collectors of Heuer watches. While before there were a bunch of us in relative isolation, we now have a place to meet, share and learn.

I've picked up a number of Heuers the past year, but rather than bore you with all of them I thought I would share with you the two transactions that have given me the most satisfaction...

First, was one of my last acquisitions of last calendar year... A Jo Siffert Autavia:

Second, was my first acquisition of the new year, the matched set of St. Louis Region SCCA Heuer Rattrapante Pocket watches:

And just to show you all that us Heuer collectors with large collections don't always get them all... Here is the one that got away from me at the end of last year.

Finally and to sum up... What makes On The Dash, isn't simply Jeff, Bruce, any of the other major contributors alone... What makes On The Dash is the active participation of all who visit us, who have ideas, ask questions and share their experience and knowledge. We've had a great start and a great first year. I'm looking forward to the second year and many more to come.

-- Chuck