I am leaving for a long weekend, so I leave you guys with a long message. I plan to add some of this information and some photos when I get back to working on the website.

A few days ago, Kav raised an intersting question about the relative value of "Abercrombies" compared with the plain Heuers. This is not such a simple question, particularly when you begin to consider that Heuer produced watches under the Abercrombie name, as well as for several other brands. Some of these other brands may have been "up-market" (Abercrombie and Turler come to mind), while others were clearly "down-market" (Tradition / Sears comes to mind). Here is my perspective on these other brands.

Heuer produced chronographs that were co-branded (to say "Heuer" and "Abercrombie" on the dial, for example) and Heuer also produced chronographs for other companies that do not have the "Heuer" name on them at all (for example, those produced under the Zodiac, Hamilton and Tradition names).

Of all these brands, Abercrombie & Fitch seems to stand alone as a brand that might enhance, and certainly does not detract from, the value of the usual Heuer timepieces. We see Carreras and certain other models that look exactly like the Heuer timepiece and include the Heuer name on the dial, but also have the second name "Abercrombie & Fitch" on the dial. Based on what I have seen on ebay and other internet sites, these timepieces seem to sell for as much as the Heuers or even more. When you think about it, these pieces probably appeal to the Heuer collectors, as well as the Abercrombie & Fitch collectors. (Heuer also produced these "co-branded" timepieces for Turler, Baylor, Gubelin, Halls and several other retailers.)

Apart from these co-branded Carreras (and Monte Carlos and other dashboard timepieces), there are other chronographs that have the Abercrombie name, but do not have the Heuer name at all. The Seafarer and the Auto-Graph come to mind, as the most valuable timepieces in this category. Here again, these timepieces seem to sell for as much as the Heuers, probably even more, because of their fine quality and relative scarcity.

Finally, there are my personal favorites, which I refer to as the "poor man's" Heuers -- timepieces that were made by Heuer for other watch companies, but do not show the Heuer name at all. Some of the poor man's brands include Tradition and Allstate (for Sear, Roebuck), Glycine, Aristo and Clebar. (In today's lingo, we would say that Heuer produced these for customers on a "private label" basis.) I believe that there are other brands as well, and will try to compile a list in the near future. I also have some photographs to add to OnTheDash within a few days. These can sell at a nice discount to the comparable Heuers -- the Zodiacs, for example, often sell at around 50% of the price of the comparable Heuer. Soemtimes, you can find them "dirt cheap", particularly if they go unnoticed on ebay. But beware -- there are some differences in the materials used to produce these chronographs (quality of the hands and dials).

The final complicating factor is that there were other companies that were either using the same cases as Heuer or having their own "knock-offs" produced. So it looks like a Camaro, but Heuer actually had nothing to do with it. These probably fall at the bottom of the food chain, though some of them look good, have good movements and may be excellent values.