Hi all,

today I have been in Parma (Italy) for the annual fair "Mercante in fiera", a famous Italian fair dedicated to art - of all kinds - and vintage collector items, so also vintage watches.

The exhibitors are local sellers coming mainly from Northern Italy, I have seen Rolex, Rolex and Rolex again (too many green boxes in those windows IMHO), but also some other beautiful brands like Omega, Movado, AP, and few Heuer.

Someone had also some beautiful Heuer pieces - like a good 741603 GMT or a NOS Carrera 1553N with GF bracelet - but generally at high prices, as usual.

I also found some fake or incorrect Heuer - yes, a manual 3 register blue Monaco with a fake dial, an Autavia 11630 with a fake dial too, a cal.15 Monza with incorrect small hands, and so on, but exhibitors didn't seem to take care of this as they put the watch in the window again after I told them my impressions...

The thing that hurted me and made me write this post is that, even if many exhibitors had at least one Heuer and I have seen 1133B Monacos sold at prices between 10k and 12kEuro (and also an honest 1533G sold at 10kEuro only because the seller told me that was published in an unspecified catalogue, bah), the general perception I had is that Heuer isn't seen yet like a valuable and collectible brand and hasn't the dignity of other vintage brands, I even heard a couple of collectors - probably Rolex ones - talking each other about an Heuer that I was looking at and saying: "Heuer? Who the hell would buy them? forget it!".

Provided that I would never buy a Rolex - too many people wear a Rolex, sometimes I think that is more like a status-symbol rather than a cool watch, but is only my poor man thinking - sometimes I feel like a man that has been encouraged by his banker to buy bank bonds of a small and unknown bank and when he is trying to resell them he understand that the reference market is very small and his investment isn't so liquid as he would have bought bonds of well-known and bigger banks...

I also hate when, during my Heuer-catch trips, I enter in a vintage watch shop and ask about Heuer watches, and sometimes happens that seller look at me like I was looking for something too cheap for his shop and says: "I'm sorry, I have Rolex, AP, and bla bla bla, but I don't treat Heuer" and laugh a bit...

Probably I'm wrong, probably Italians collectors - or at least many of them - aren't open minded like European or USA ones, for sure I will go on collecting and enjoying Heuer watches, but I'm curious to know your perceptions about this fact.

Thanks for your opinion.

Cheers.

Gianluca