Perhaps the "Pass the Trash" caption was too harsh . . . my own sense is that the current seller is a victim, having bought what he believed to be a genuine watch, from a seller who has offered several blatant fakes, in the recent past.

I am highly confident that this one is a fake, in the sense that Heuer never produced a watch with this style of dial. While we do not have catalogs from the 1950s, we see dozens (or perhaps hundreds) of watches per year from this decade, being offered on eBay and through the dealers, so that the folks who watch them can develop a pretty good sense of what was made by Heuer and what wasn't. So I am highly confident that Heuer never produced anything resembling this dial.

The seller states that it is refinished; when add in the poorly fitting dauphine hands, which are unlike any that Heuer used in the early 1950s, it seems to be "case closed".

Jeff

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

: Well, I think "Pass the trash" was perhaps a little
: harsh. More a classic case of buyer's remorse on realising they
: didn't quite have what they thought they did. They do point out
: that it's restored, at least to some extent.

: I agree with caveat emptor and usually would wholeheartedly agree
: with the "do your research" first maxim too. I do
: wonder where they might find info on that period of Heuer
: history though. Personally I wouldn't be able to help them
: anything like as much as if they had a question on the 60s and
: 70s watches, or even the pre-WWII stuff. I can summarise what I
: know about Heuer's 50s activity in a few lines:

: - they started producing "white label" watches for
: Abercrombie & Fitch
: - Jack Heuer was mainly working in their US office
: - they produced lots of time-only watches, many of which were
: automatic, some of which had a star on and I have no idea what
: that signifies!
: - the refocus on chronographs again only happened right at the end
: of the decade
: - some of the time-only watches seem to have been remaindered to
: retailers like Zales and Baylor
: - they produced some complicated watches like the Mareographe;
: triple calendars continued to be a staple

: And that really is about it. Do I know what they produced after the
: 2447 and before the first 404s/3336s? Not really. Am I sure
: there wasn't a Heuer version of the Auto-Graph? Far from it,
: though I do suspect if there was, it wouldn't be as monochrome
: as the watch under discussion.

: I keep hoping that one of the new people to the forum is a 50s
: expert, who can brain dump all their knowledge, research and
: materials here, but it's yet to happen :)