Rich has published the first quarterly update of his Vintage Heuer Price Guide.

Here's a link to Rich's update on the current market for vintage Heuers-- http://www.heuerpriceguide.com/#/heuer-market-update/4561103271 -- and this update is also copied below.

Please share your thoughts regarding (a) what you are seeing in the market, (b) your suggestions of "what's hot" and "what's not", (c) any role that Rich's Price Guide may have played in your buying or selling vintage Heuers, or (d) anything else that may be of interest.

Thanks to Rich for the update and for permission to copy portions here.

Jeff

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Guide Edition 2: June 2012

The market for Heuers continues to be a strong one, most notably for the “grail” models, although there are some signs that the market is going through its usual summer stagnation and I expect prices to level out now until autumn. The volume of watches being offered for sale is low at the moment, again expected for the time of year, but there are still many emails being sent back and forth between collectors in the hope of sourcing particular watches. This is often the best way to find a watch, better than waiting in vain for an EBay search to come to fruition, especially as you still run the risk on EBay of missing out to a buyer who is quicker to the “button” than you. EBay sales can still offer up a bargain though, several 1163 Sifferts, GMTs and early Autavias sold in the past quarter (none in mint conditions) at the mid to lower end of guide levels, but this should be the case to reflect the level of risk often involved, with regards to both the sellers reputation and level of accuracy (or not) of the goods for sale. Private sales have seen most of the action, as mentioned above, with collectors keen to source particular models from trusted sources. Retail sales have been few and far between as only a handful of dealers source good quality Heuers. What there has been though has seen prices moving up, Worldoftime for example seems to sell good condition Autavia GMT and Siffert variants within a day of them being listed and at very strong money.

The 2nd guide edition sees increases in the most desired watches, mostly in the 5% region, however the majority of models remained at previous guide levels. The "green" highlighted values (with a + sign on the right hand side) indicate values that have increased, red would indicate falls (however there are none for the 2nd edition). Autavias have seen most movement with 1163 GMT & Siffert models, 2446 and 3646 1st execution (big subs, dauphine hands) and manual wind Siffert coloured executions (such as 73633) going up in value. There are also continue to be serious top level collectors looking for Monaco and Siffert Chronomatics, but only very isolated cases of actual transactions taking place. It is safe to say prices on these models continue to gather momentum as they are now some of the most desired vintage watches (regardless of brand) on the market. Generally within the Carrera, Monaco and the "notable others" price guides, values have remained as they were, only the odd model has seen uplift.

There is also evidence of people seeking out rare and prototype dials, whatever model range they may belong to. So think along the lines of the Autavia 1163V Exotic dial "prototype", Carrera 2447 “sailing special order", 73633 variant with Arabic bund dial or manual wind Siffert colours, these are clearly watches collectors are now hunting down as desired pieces for collections. Also the very rare (only a handful seen so far) 11630 / 1163 white dial is being sought. The jury is out on if this was originally only a 11630 variant, but several have been seen in the correct serial range cases as 1163 "white boys", either way it is another very rare Heuer execution and bidding has been strong to own one of the few currently in the market. The more collectors who “switch on” to vintage Heuer collecting the more that these rare models will become important and sought out, and as few collectors are parting with these pieces, prices look set to rise further. One of the most attractive traits of collecting vintage Heuer, was the sheer number of model and dial variations made. Heuer certainly chopped and change in search of a sales “bulls-eye” and this often made for small dial runs, with many of the less successful (at the time) variants likely to have been made in batches of 500-1000 or even less. Of course what remains today might well be a fraction of those original dial production runs and when we look at the "prototype" dials, far less still.

In a future update i will touch more upon the rarity of Heuers and the rarest and most desirable variants. Suffice to say there are many vintage Heuers of which we know of only a handful of examples to be in collectors hands. Also as mentioned below, even some of the more known variants are often only seen perhaps 10-20 times in a calendar year, it is what makes owning some of these pieces even more rewarding.

In this past quarter there was a sale of a small Heuer collection via Bonhams, pieces were of variable quality (condition and correctness were not comparable to the AMH TAG Heuer sponsored Bonhams auction) and prices achieved were largely as expected, within the “good” to “average” price ranges. Condition & correctness remains the mantra of a serious collector and this will always be worth paying more for in the long run!

HIGHLIGHTS

Autavia 3646/2446 1st Execution - These watches represent fantastic value for money in my opinion. Driven by the same movement as the Rolex Daytonas, they are valued at approx. 20-25% of the Rolex’s value. With the big sub registers and beautiful dauphine sword hands they look spectacular, and in my opinion are still undervalued. Demand is increasing, but with a supply that is tiny (we may be lucky to see 5 of these come up for sale each year), there is an imbalance and prices look set to continue to rise.

Autavia Siffert 1163 – This variant is one of the more attainable Heuer holy grails. Whilst it is hardly plentiful in the market (perhaps we see 15-20 a year) it is not quite like looking for a “needle in a haystack” like some other Heuer grails. The white dial is unusual and whilst there are many white dial vintage watches, most do not look as “right” as this model. Add in the connection with Jo Siffert the GP racing legend and it is a watch that is now close to the level of desirability and value as a 1133b Monaco McQueen. For me the smart money is on the 1st execution, but there is also plenty of demand for the blue stripe hands, especially with nicely patina’d original hands (and not new service type).

Poor condition and incorrect parts bin watches. Collectors are getting fussier, especially with prices rising and with original parts so difficult to track down. Cases with serials that do not match the dial, hands that are plain wrong, bezels that are from another model (or brand!), these watches are forever seen on 30 day cycles on Ebay, they need to be priced as the sum of their parts or are likely to never sell.