Bit of a saga this one chaps and it's been yonks since I last posted (got married, had a baby, moved house etc), so apologies !

I bought this Siffert

With my meagre inheritance when my Dad died in 2006. It was in a curios shop in Cape Town and had the wrong crystal, recoloured hands (red !) wrong bezel and the case was a bit "worn".

The seller knew it was rare and I wasn't massively up on Heuers at the time (still know 1% of what Jeff knows !) but it came with the GF rice grain bracelet and I fell in love. He wouldn't move on the £1,200 price, so I bought it and have never regretted it since.

The case was refinished to what I would describe as 99% perfect! with immaculate polished edges and proper sunburst finish. One of those grit your teeth and pay up jobbies ! Heuer replaced the bezel and insert with NOS correct ones as well as a NOS crystal and Abel very kindly did some work on the hands including fitting correct register hands and repainting the second hand.

The watch was pretty much now original Heuer, although improved with Heuer parts to make it non full original condition if you get my drift.

The only thing letting it down was the dial, which although it had a nice yellowed patina, was letting everything else down. I found the dial you see on the pic on the internet and had the original one replaced and popped in a brown envelope for safe keeping. The new dial was a sympathetic temporary replacement with the intention of one day getting the original dial looked at by an expert to see what could be done.

See the bit about the house move ?

Guess who now can't find the original dial ?!

To say I'm gutted is an understatement, I keep thinking it will turn up somewhere, but as the months turn into years I'm beginning to think it may not.

I'm aware that the replacement dial is missing lume and the metal frame around the date box is missing, so the question is - can I get these issues sorted and is it worth doing ? I'm certainly not looking to pass the watch off as original and will probably never sell it as it's my inheritance, but with it the way it is it's feeling as though it's missing something.

It's just arrived back from a full service at Heuer and has new pushers, crystal, crown and pushers, so will be in fine fettle and ready for some serious airtime.

I must get round to removing the plastic protector on the crystal, so if you're thinking the pic is a little less than sharp that's the reason !

All comments gratefully received and if anyone fancies taking on a re lume job let me know.

Cheers

Jonny