Interesting discussion - and yepp, I thought about that some time ago too ;)

I am not sure too - because I know other yachting watches they start with white hands and put colored hands later on the watch.
I think that causes that you have to know very quick the time with a look on the watch, when you got the sails in the wind. And the watchmaker learned by using the watches. Heuer changed the subdials sometimes, there should be a reason.

I am going with Davids guess - they are faded. On the hard worn projectwatch on ebay last night you can see on the dial how the orange went, there is just a bit over. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mens-Tag-Heuer-Skipper-Autavia-17J-42mm-Yachting-Vintage-Chronograph-1970s-Watch-/190994237578?pt=Wristwatches&hash=item2c7824c88a

The question is, what causes the hands are white - could be a put-together or service hands - or absolute correct, who knows ;)

But: all of the "white-handed-editions" I have seen are very rugged and bleeched from sun, never seen a NOS or minty one.

And Jeff - you are right, I never seen orange hands faded real to white hands, they should be light yellow - or they are some other kind of painting on it, could went to white.
These are on your pics (never seen, can I have a dump of your local "c:/Skipper/" pls.? ;) ) are white, impossible to fade that way. Not all 3 hands!

And there is another thing, I am not sure about - the glasses. They are sometimes domed without the "normal" edge like on the other Autavias from that time. Could be a replaced one, but I found that more then 3 times on the early 73464 till now and they look very original - what do you think? Are there some other 73463 Autavias with domed glass?

Cheers,
Henrik