These had quite a long lifetime but for much of it, I feel they were probably only made to order. They were in the order of 2 to 3 times more costly than just about any other watch in the Heuer catalogue throughout that entire period. Put yourself in the shoes of a distributor - are you going to get one of these in in the hope of selling it, given that you likely have watches from other manufacturers more renowned for selling in that price range, or are you going to get 3 steel Carreras or Autavias that you know to be good sellers?

How is it possible that Heuer made six different versions of this watch, with total production of 150 pieces? The answer seems to be that these were in production for a long time, and changes that were made to the mainstream models were often reflected in the 1158s too. The lifetime of the 1158 is at least 8 years. How many other Heuer models had that sort of lifetime in the 70s? How many changes did those models undergo in that lifetime?

How is the survival rate so high, with our seeing several of these bought and sold every year? Ok, now it's time to put yourself in the shoes of the owner of a fresh, gorgeous and - not the least - expensive new 1158. You've just spent 3 times what you might have paid for a steel 1153. Are you going to give the watch a rough time, or is it going to live a pampered life? Heck, if you know you're going to submit a watch to rough treatment and you can afford an 1158, don't you just buy an 1153 alongside it and use that for the rough stuff? A Monaco might fetch much more than an 1158 Carrera now, but it wasn't the case at the time - these are the safe dwellers of the Heuer world in the 70s, not the Steve McQueens and Sifferts.

Several of these bought and sold every year. Yes, but in this case several is really not that many. This year has seen more than usual changing hands perhaps, but then the profile of these has also been raised this year. We know from Jack Heuer that total production of Monacos was somewhere around 5000 units. If there were indeed only 150 1158s made, then we would see about 33 times as many Monacos come onto the market each year as 1158s. If SPY for 1158s is 6, that means a couple of hundred Monacos a year. And I'm not sure that's all that far off.

Given the state of Heuer's record keeping, I take all production numbers with a pinch of salt. But ~20 of these per year of production for a total of 150 actually feels about right. Even if the figure were only to be for one configuration, say the CHN, I don't think we would be talking as high as 3 times that adding the CHs and Ss in - CHNs and CHs seem about equal, with somewhat fewer Ss around. With the nature of the watch I don't really see 150 total as being any sort of stretch. What I would like to know is how many of the even more incredibly expensive bracelets were ever made!