: Very interesting discussion here.

: My perspective (as one collector in a community of many
: collectors): If the Portuguese military ordered these special
: watches, then Heuer ordered the dials, but never assembled the
: watches, and some time later, someone else assembled them (with
: whatever hands and movements they could find), this one is not
: worth much to me, as a collector. Others may appreciate them
: more and pay more for them, but not me.

: Yes, we all know the stories of the leftover dials -- Indianapolis
: Motor Speedway, Volvo, Champion, etc. And now people make
: complete watches from these leftover dials. If you buy to
: resell, and will not give all the information in your
: descriptions, then maybe the put-together watches are valuable
: to you. Others may value them to look at, and keep forever, in
: their own collections. For me, personally, the value in
: collecting vintage watches comes in having a watch that was made
: by Heuer (completed by Heuer), back in the day. Other may see it
: differently (and value the watches differently).

: Jeff

: ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

:

Military watches fall into a few categories, the most collectable and expensive are those that were selected or designed, procured, stamped and issued.
As far as I can see these are ones prepared (under instruction) but never finalised.

For me, as a small military watch collector, they would not hold much value as to have a working watch you will need to add ad-hoc hands, they were not actually issued and are not marked up, so have no military history associated with them. There exact provenance is a cloudy area also, it would seem.

Strangely though, other prototypes like the Cal 12 bund that never was or the GIGN Zenith would be far more valuable I think as at least the watch was complete (and completed by the manufacturer).

So for others I could see why they would see an attraction with this particular one(s), just not me personally.

'one man, one hat' as we used to say.