Marks masterclass indeed!

Please put my name down for a book, will "Mark" it in my diary for 3 years time.

Can't wait!

Best

Rich

: Thanks Arno. If I do a book, I'd like it to be at least
: semi-"official" so that would be a discussion I would
: have to have with TAG Heuer. The Carrera's 50th anniversary
: comes up in 3 short years, so that would be a nice timeframe in
: which to get it done.

: Yes. I remember parts being sold for a lot longer than that but I
: definitely remember when there weren't so many watches being
: recycled and fresh watches would come onto the market for the
: first time from collectors more frequently than now. Still
: happens, but much less often and they are often better informed
: now - I guess all the Heuer sites share the "blame"
: for that now, and we don't get the bargains very often at all.
: With the extra research and emphasis on the divers, even those
: are on the up now. I looked at the Camaros on Chrono24 after
: Julien posted his query on them and the prices being asked for
: fair to good Camaros on there is staggering.

: : Back to the advertised and discussed Carrera dial, just a
: few

: Some good questions Arno, let's see what we think. Maybe you have
: some ideas to pitch in too.

: That one's hard to tell. They showed prototypes at various shows
: building up to series production, but as Paolo stated in one of
: his replies, a number of each model was shown at each show, even
: as early as Basel in April. So there's no rhyme and reason to
: why the models should differ at all. But if we look at the press
: release announcing these in March 1969, we see something perhaps
: unexpected in the dials:

:
:

: Yep. No model names at all, even though the other details are
: pretty much as per the final product. So we can assume that the
: dial designs were in flux during the process. Perhaps the
: designs were fixed at different times, which is about the only
: reason I can think of why the 1163 T should differ from the MH
: as much as it does. Though the printing has an impact on that
: too, we'll get to that next.

: This one could be easy. Ever check out the printing on a 60s
: Carrera N versus S? They were able to get much finer printing on
: the silver/standard/white dials than they ever were on the
: black. It's something that dogged Heuer and plenty of other
: manufacturers (given they had the same dial suppliers) for years
: - check out a Montreal with black text against one with white
: text to see that it was still easier to print fine detail in
: black years later. It seems resolved now and manufacturers can
: print white lines/text just as fine as black ones, but it wasn't
: the case in the 60s and 70s.

: This one is hard to tell, as the dial is skewed a bit in the frame.
: I drew some extrapolation lines on it though, and it is indeed
: parallel:

:
:

: Singer made the dials for all the second generation Carreras as far
: as I'm aware. I don't know if all the dial reverses are marked,
: as it's a side I don't get to see often! Perhaps Paul took a
: picture of the reverse of his Abercrombie & Fitch
: Chronomatic dial and could shed some light on that one? I don't
: know that Heuer had any capacity to print dials so I reckon
: Singer would have delivered the dials. Who applied the logo on
: company specials is unclear - Singer employed dial painters, so
: something like that A&F dial was probably handfinished at Singer
: but where it's a company logo it may well have depended on how
: controlling that company were over their logo. If they already
: had printers with the capability to print an existing logo on
: dials, then they may have gone to them for finishing - the dials
: with the Heuer text etc would still have come from Singer in
: that case, they wouldn't have been delivered as dial blanks.
: They can use the dial feet to locate the dial for printing,
: which Singer are obviously used to - a third party printer is
: less likely to have equipment to fit so I'd guess, and I stress
: guess, that most of the time the dial supplier was supplied with
: a printing template for the logo and passed the finished dial to
: Heuer.

: The starburst dials seem to me to have a thin layer of lacquer to
: protect them, whereas the dark ones don't. They look to be
: genuinely metallic so it's probably to prevent or at least
: retard oxidation - seems pretty successful, we tend to see the
: darker or matte dials patinated more often than the silver
: metallics.

: I expected to find that it had a gold window surround, as that's
: what I'm used to on the 1158s, even when they've got an S dial.
: Looking at that other early watch though, I can't really tell if
: that has a silver surround too. It's an outstanding question
: mark over this dial really.

: Not always, but there are telltale marks you often see around the
: pinion hole and the registers that suggest that hands have been
: removed. It takes a very careful hand to remove watch hands
: without leaving any mark and from what I've seen, watchmakers
: are really quite careful enough unfortunately.

: I believe we're up to 5 now, all in cases numbered 147xxx (which
: also accounts for the earliest "Automatic Chronograph"
: watches) and all with N dials. The 1153 S Chronomatic is one of
: my "known unknowns" - never seen one, but I believe
: they may exist until absolutely proven otherwise. The sample
: size of Carrera Chronomatics is so small compared to the other
: models (for whatever reason) that it's still within the realms
: of statistical probability that it's just coincidence we've only
: seen N dials so far. Or so I tell myself!