Also,having missed the one on Munich the link came in handy.
I`d nominate Jeff and yourself for the post of OTD`s fieldcorrespondents : )

I`d personally really like to see a London report as well.It`s one of my favourite cities,and I usually go there a couple of times a year to see some excellent attacking football up in the N5.
But I never seem to find the good spots to do my watchhunting.

Cheers!
Marius

: I’ve been getting around quite a bit this year! Following on from
: the reports from Munich and New York, I now have the third in my
: occasional series of City reports – this time on Berlin.

:

: I worked in Berlin for about a year, but keeping office hours meant
: I never became as familiar with it from a watch perspective (or
: any perspective really) as I am with Munich. Nonetheless, I
: thought it would be a good idea to start in the same place –
: i.e. with the gold exchanges. The good thing about these is that
: they are pretty much everywhere, there’s no real need to
: search them out – wander round for long enough, and they more
: or less come to you... They must get a better quality of
: customer in Munich, though, as the few I visited in Berlin had
: nothing of interest, let alone any Heuers. They often seem to
: carry some of the minor fashion brand watches, though – I’m
: talking Guess, Diesel etc, that sort of thing. I don’t know
: what sort of value those brands get from this brand extension
: – the watches often end-up being sold cheaply in fairly
: low-rent shops, which I would think is not the image they want
: to portray. Seems like there are enough customers though –
: even though they could well be better off just buying a Swatch.

: Much as in New York, there was something to be found in the
: department stores though. To be specific, in KaDeWe, the
: “flagship” department store in Berlin – it’s tagline of
: “the largest department store in continental Europe” always
: vaguely amuses me, with its implicit recognition that Harrods is
: larger. Not sure how big GUM is in comparison either, if we
: follow the lax definition of Europe that UEFA seems to adopt
: (Israel included???). Anyway, that’s kind of by the by. What
: caught my attention was the display in the windows outside. Each
: window was occupied by one or more Omegas, commemorating the
: 40th anniversary of the moon landing. The watches were all on
: loan from the Omega Museum. KaDeWe seems to have quite strong
: links to Omega – they had an equally large display of some of
: the watches that were to be sold at Omegamania before that took
: place too. As soon as you went inside, it was clear that the
: theme continued, with a big display of both watches and moon
: landing paraphernalia.

:

: Whereas the watches outside were models Omega had released to
: commemorate the landings, those inside included some of the
: watches actually worn by astronauts (it makes me wonder whether
: anyone visiting the Omega museum within the last few weeks
: noticed large holes in the collection – guess they have enough
: to keep coverage up, even with a significant amount out on
: loan).

: There were astronaut watches from Thomas Stafford,

:

: Donn Eiseles and Alexei Yeliseyev (though I guess that should be
: cosmonaut watch in that case),

:

: as well as a JFK watch and the 18k gold Speedie offered to Nixon
: that he declined to accept.

:

: Also, they had the Alaska Project 1 and 2 watches that Omega built
: to try and improve on the Speedmaster for space use
: (unnecessarily according to NASA!), which I found interesting -
: especially as I found the recent Alaska Project LE to be an
: attractive watch. The exhibition runs until 24th August, if you
: happen to find yourself in Berlin and have an interest in the
: moon watches - the fact it's in Berlin's biggest department
: store should keep the better half happy too!

: There was a nice “newspaper” memorabilia item that Omega had
: produced too, with some moon landing details and a double-page
: spread of 36 Omega watches with a moon or space connection. I
: don’t really want it, so if there is an Omega collector out
: there who does, let me know and I can send it on (preferably in
: Europe, so the postage costs aren’t too high!).

: KaDeWe finally has a TAG-Heuer concession too (previously it was
: only a couple of cabinets within the Christ concession in store,
: so a step up). Christ generally seems to have stopped stocking
: TAG, though, so that may be the reason. (Christ is a jeweller in
: Germany, if anyone is wondering what on earth I’m on about!).
: They didn’t have a limited edition Monaco, but had sold at
: least one according to the salesperson, who seemed to be filling
: in for a colleague so I wasn’t too sure on that one...

: I was able to check out a handful of dealers too, but again with no
: luck on the Heuer front. I know Linckersdorff has several, but
: they were on holiday whilst I was there, so I wasn’t able to
: see theirs.

: I did find this car, though, which would make the perfect accessory
: for the man sporting a ‘30s Heuer:

:

: Or maybe those chronos are best reserved for the drivers of this
: 320’s more motorsport-related brother, the 328.

: I then left the search for a while, but knew that come the weekend
: museum trips, there would be a flea market outside the
: Pergamonmuseum (if you’re in Berlin and can only visit one
: museum, I’d recommend this one – it specialises in truly
: monumental antiquities, which isn’t normally my first choice
: but these are truly impressive).

:

: I’d been to this market once before, so my hopes weren’t
: particularly high. And so it proved. There was one seller with
: watches, and they were all of Russian/Soviet bloc provenance.
: Interesting nonetheless, with a couple of nice Poljot chronos.

: Back on the train to go and get some lunch, I spotted a large
: market right by the Tiergarten station. So back there after
: lunch for a bit of a look around – had probably been up and
: running for too long for any bargains, but you never know...
: Immediately it was clear that there were more watches than at
: the other market – mixed between the stands with just the odd
: watch or two; those with a couple of cabinets of watches on
: their stall; and the final sort, that had lots of watches thrown
: together in a tray like some sort of horological pick-and-mix!

: I sometimes feel that we’ve done too good a job of promoting and
: raising awareness about the Heuers and the bargains just
: aren’t out there any more. But not so much that, when I see a
: box of mixed watches like this, I don’t get a bit excited
: about the chance of finding a diamond in the rough (whilst, of
: course, maintaining the poker face so as not to alert the seller
: of any interest!). Nothing this time round though.

: Onto the dealers. One had various bits and pieces, nothing of
: interest to me. Including a modern Panerai, where I absolutely
: cannot see the attraction – as far as I can see, these watches
: do nothing except “large”. And even that with very little
: grace. And they seem to be at least partly responsible for
: starting the oversized trend – which even Omega seems to have
: caught, judging by some of the oversized DeVilles in KaDeWe. The
: next dealer was better – a wide selection of (human
: wrist-sized) Omegas and lots of other interesting watches too. I
: thought one of them was a Pasadena at first, but it was in fact
: a Meister Anker lookalike. I have a feeling that we have come
: across some of these on the forum before?

: And several Glashütte Originals. A couple of which had broken
: lugs. Which makes me wonder a bit to be honest. Glashütte
: Original as such has only been around since 1994 and has a
: reputation for quality, so what are two of them doing with
: broken lugs? I suspect that some of these are the predecessor
: company’s watches sporting –Original dials. Is this
: something our German-resident forum members have seen?

: And actually the Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe (GUB) watches are pretty
: interesting in and of themselves anyway. A conglomerate of
: several watchmaking companies who happened to find themselves in
: the former East Germany after the second World War, including
: such luminaries as A.Lange u. Söhne as well as what would
: become Glashütte Original. The watches themselves seem to be
: pretty nice (apart from having lugs with a propensity for
: breaking, of course!). And we only need look as far as Zeiss
: Jena to see that being in East Germany needn’t necessarily
: mean the quality isn’t there. From what I’ve seen, they
: mainly seem to have produced three-hand watches, so my money
: stayed in the wallet but I did find them quite attractive –
: and not dissimilar to 50s-era Omegas actually. And possibly 50s
: Heuers too, but that’s the decade that time forgot as far as
: my knowledge of Heuers goes – it really kicks in with the 60s
: for me, but I’m more familiar with 30s and 40s watches than I
: am with those from the 50s. Barring some that Jarl has posted
: here and blogged about, I think I’ve only seen one or two on
: eBay and that’s the sum total of my knowledge. So if anyone
: has watches from, or info on, Heuer in the 50s, please post
: them, you’ll have at least one interested reader in me!

: Some Googling back at the hotel turned up one of the (in-house,
: impressively) movements used in these GUB watches:

:
:

: Amazing, a watch powered by Spezi! You’d have thought it would
: quickly become sticky and render the watch inoperable, but
: apparently not! Yes, I know that only makes any sense at all to
: our German readers but don’t worry, the joke is far too lame
: to translate/explain...

: So another city that was a bit of a Heuer desert for me. Unlike New
: York, though (where ironically I did eventually find one Heuer),
: I get the feeling that they are out there – you just need to
: be lucky and in the right place at the right time. In part, this
: is down to Berlin’s nature as a conglomeration of earlier
: towns and villages without a strongly defined centre (I touched
: on this back in the Munich report), so it’s quite easy not to
: be in the right place...

: Suggestions for the next destination welcome! And it would be great
: to see some more of these, sentiments that were echoed when I
: wrote the previous two as well:

: Munich:
: http://www.chronocentric.com/forums/heuer/index.cgi?read=28084

: New York:
: http://www.chronocentric.com/forums/heuer/index.cgi?read=29707

: Jasper’s reports from the shows are great too, so let’s see
: more city and event reports, I know we must have people who
: travel and go to these sort of events frequently.

: I should probably write one on London, I always dismiss that as
: it’s close to home...