I own the "Milk Chocolate" Autavia, SN 224156 (shown below), and have always been curious about how it fits into the sequence of Autavias. A couple of days ago, I received a couple of photos of 224277, which seems to be the same execution Autavia as 224156, except with more extreme fading.

In terms of the origin of the "stripes" on the registers, we see them on the "Orange Boys", which start around 241xxx, but we see that these Milk Chocolate dials have them earlier.

There is also the question of the hands -- orange-edged (as on the Milk Chocolate guys) versus brushed steel (as on the Orange Boy and Viceroy). Perhaps seeing the second sample in the same range of serial numbers shows that Heuer was using them before the run of Autavias. [Of course, both sets of hands -- on 224156 and 224277 -- could have been replaced, but this seems unlikely.]

Date on the bracelet of 224156 is fourth quarter of 1971, confirming that these samples predate the Viceroys (and the Cal 15 models that have the stripes on the dials).

So the question for the historians -- are these the first Autavias with the stripes on the registers? Are they the first use of the orange-edged hands? Perhaps I am missing something in the sequence?

Jeff