I agree and understand that there are very few bargain Heuers left these days, but a quick story below that illustrates why I strongly prefer a "gentlemen's agreement" to wait until after the auction for discussion (especially if you aren't bidding).

My pride and joy is the 2446 Rindt that I was lucky enough to snag from eBay (auction picture below). It definitely wasn't under the radar, as I think 200 people were "watching" the auction's final moments, but I like to think a major reason I ended up with it was because it hadn't been discussed anywhere and others were forced to come to their own conclusions about it. For more tenured collectors that already had a screwback / Rindt, there wasn't much point in stretching for one that may or may not look good in person (through all the scratches). For novice collectors, they probably didn't know what they were looking at and didn't feel confident enough to bid on a potentially beat-up piece. That dynamic thins out the herd to a much smaller group of interested and well-read bidders trying to take it home, with the majority of the "watchers" simply following along to keep tabs on the market.

When discussions are opened and people are able to opine / share their opinion about a piece before bidding starts (or in the case of eBay, ends), it flips that dynamic on its head and anyone with enough money can aggressively bid for things that had the stamp of approval from Jeff / all of the other OTD veterans who have been around for a long time, regardless of their knowledge base prior to the auction. Maybe the outcome of the 2446 auction would've been the same, but a large part of me thinks that it wouldn't (since the final price was within 1% of my snipe bid's max price).

I'm not saying anything needs to be policed, and I'm 100% not trying to throw the OP in this thread under the bus. At the very least, it's interesting to hear where others stand on the topic.