We've all seen these dials available for some time and they all have the "Made in France" text at the bottom which is handy to determine if someone has:

A. Replaced their Heuer dial with the ebay dial (assuming the caseback has the correct reference)
B. Assembled an "844" from readily available parts

The French made 844s present a problem as they are generally not Heuer-signed anywhere but the dial. This is what has lead to the rampant orange 844s that have been assembled from non-Heuer parts along with the ebay dials and then listed for sale without declaring it as such.

The hands are the usual giveaway. They are either the wrong color (should be black) or the wrong style. There should be a cathedral hours hand. The Fe4611a has slightly different hand sizes from the ETA 2872/2824/536.121 movements so people usually assemble a set using commercially available hands and "modifying them" to work. You can buy cathedral hands for the ETA series from many sources but rarely do people have black hands (I guess they are too lazy to paint & lume them before sloping their creation on ebay).

I was telling Kerrigan that these assembled watches aren't a huge deal when trying to determine the legitimacy of 980.005/.007s as they are easily distinguishable from the ebay dial variants...just look for the text at the bottom of the dial.

I've built a few of these orange jumbos for customers but none of mine have ever popped up for sale, that and I generally only build them for good clients whom I've worked with for a long time and that I know are not attempting to defraud someone.

Does anyone have any guesses as to the ebay dial origins? I've discussed this with a few fellow OTD'ers and so far the following theories have been made:

A. Service dials
B. Dials that resulted from a change in the printing prior to production and were never used in a production model
C. Period correct blanks with Heuer printing
D. Reproductions

I've compared a couple genuine 980.007 dials and the ebay dials side by side a few times in the past and made the following observations:

•The quality and style of the printing of the dials to me is spot on. The printing is just as crisp and thick as the genuine 980.007.
•The orange is the same as was the level of wear (it was clear that the ebay dial was not new but has been sitting around for decades). I'm not talking about scratches per se just hairline marks and such.
•The lume is consistent with the genuine article as well.

I've spoke at length with Steve P on this and I'm sure I've left something out or restated a theory that we've determined not to be plausible.

Thoughts and suggestions are welcome 👍

Cheers guys and HAGWE!

Justin B
www.TAG1000Diver.com