: more interesting to me is, wher we have found them: all 4 I have hold in my hands in the past 12 years came from ebay in germany.
: i found this striking....so may be people do still know, where the have bought the item at the first time.... ape

It pays to remember that, when we are talking vintage Heuer, we are largely talking about a time when there weren't the plethora of limited editions that we see now. Most of the limited run watches are unintentional - they simply didn't sell as many as the manufacturer hoped.

Some of the numbers being bandied about for various models recently will only apply to customer-dial watches, like the Indy, Volvo or MG watches. Everything else was made in at least the hundreds. It might surprise you that, even though the dial variant was not marked on the cases, most Heuers were produced in dial batches - so there is a run of Siffert dials, potentially discrete from Viceroy dials but often contiguous. It's the sort of thing that only comes to light from a systemic study of serial numbers and faetures of the watches involved.

But now to come to Alex's interesting point, as promised by the title. Whilst there might not be limited edition runs as we understand them today, there are definitely some watches that seem to be limited to specific markets.

There are a couple of Carrera models where literally every watch I have seen has been in Germany, or is traceable to there, for example. Others I have seen omitted from UK price lists whilst they feature on the identical catalogue for France or Germany. If you're recording info about your watches, and can find out where it originated, it tells a potentially interesting story, although one sometimes obfuscated by unscrupulous sellers who maintain a clearly messed-with watch is all original as purchased in [insert name of town here] by their dear, departed uncle/aunt/other relative...

In terms of the numbers we see, I figure if we see 1, there are 9 others out there, lost, abandoned or in the hands of people who just aren't interested in watches, especially the collecting scene.