I feel as though I have been "away from home", working with the Hodinkee article and the related blog pieces -- mine and Mark's -- but not paying enough attention to this forum over the last couple of days. So I thought that I would jot down a couple of random thoughts / points that may be of interest to the "home team". These are truly random, without much rhyme or reason . . . just whatever comes to (this very tired) mind.

• I believe that there were "Viceroys" before the Viceroy promotion. By this I mean that serial numbers and case-back engravings seem to show that, prior to May 1972 (when the promotion began) there were Autavias in the market that were identical to those offered in the early stages of the Viceroy promotion . . . meaning, for example, "economy dial" and Tachy bezel.
• The brevity of the Viceroy promotion (May 1972 through December 1972) came as something of a surprise . . . we had heard that it lasted for a couple of years.
• The estimated number of Autavias sold in the Viceroy promotion (5,000) was huge (in the context of Heuer's chronograph production), but smaller than what we had heard previously (something like 15,000 suggested in the "Mastering Time" book).
• It was very interesting for me to be reminded -- primarily by Jack Heuer and Ronnie von Gunten (country manager for the US) -- that in 1972, Heuers were not often sold in jewelry stores [at least in the US], but were being sold by specialists -- aviation, scientific, sports timing and industrial supply companies -- primarily through catalogs. Heuer had a tiny advertising budget in those days, with advertising also limited to publications for these special markets.
• Shocking to find in the tobacco company documents that Brown & Williamson almost did the promotion with Hamilton. We can only speculate about which Hamilton chronograph would have been offered and whether Heuer would have actually produced the chronographs. I assume that it would have been the Pan-Europ or Chrono-Matic; great move by Viceroy in switching over to Heuer, for the "Auto Racer" promotion.
• Be sure to study Mark's Blog Posting; it covers much more than the Viceroy serial numbers and is a great introduction to Heuer's use of serial numbers and batches of cases.
• I was surprised to be criticized for not addressing the public health aspects of Heuer doing a promotion with a tobacco company. This issue never crossed my mind, even for a moment, as I was working on the research and writing [some might say that this is evidence of my lack of sensitivity on this point]. When the dust (or cloud of smoke) settles, it might be interesting to ask Jack Heuer whether it crossed his mind, back in 1972. Difficult to imagine that any watch company would have said "no" to Brown & Williamson for this sort of promotion, with the seven months of "free advertising" and sales of thousands of watches. Do you see any public health / policy issues when you look at a Viceroy?