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The place for discussing 1930-1985 Heuer wristwatches, chronographs and dash-mounted timepieces. Online since May 2003.
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Questions and conclusions - but more questions that anything

Hi all, I'm a brand new member here but I've been posting on the Military Watch Resource for about 7-8 years. Being a collector of Lemania chronographs, I was asked by Mr. Ryan to give some of my thoughts on this matter. Unfortunately, I actually don't have any additional thoughts to contribute beyond what has already been written but, as I always try to do, I would like to apply a little added impartiality to this thread to try and get to the bottom of the issue at hand.

First of all, whether the watch was made in the 1950s or the 1960s - someone can always make a mistake in terms of decades and we don't want to be too heavy handed should such an error be made.

Second, let's try to glean as much information on the watch alone - independent of expert opinion. In order to do this - we have to ask ourselves a few questions and get some additional info from Antiquorum. Namely:

1) In the description of the movement, no mention is made of it having a column wheel, so it is highly likely that the movement is the Landeron cal. 248; can this be confirmed?

2) The movement is signed Heuer-Leonidas; a merger which occurred in the mid-1960s; AQ doesn't mention that the case is actually signed, they mention how it is merely 'numbered'. What is this number and is it consistent with cases (especially gold cases) manufactured by Heuer from the mid-1960s onwards?

3) Would we be able to see a close-up of the movement that would allow us to see just how the movement is signed - is it signed in such a way which is consistent with the way Heuer-Leonida movements normally were?

If points #2 and #3 can be confirmed we could be well on our way to declaring the watch as 'authentic'. If these cannot be confirmed however, we must rely on the expert opinion which has already confirmed that no such combination of movement plus patented function were ever used by the Heuer company.

Antiquorum, however, seems to base itself on hard evidence and hard evidence only. So far, so good right? Now how do you *prove* that something is fake? In 'logic' terms, this is impossible because one cannot prove a negative. For example, I can't produce a document that proves the Easter Bunny is make-believe. So when Mr. Ryan and the scores of military collectors who, among themselves, know for a fact that the apparent military issue Seamaster 300 dive watch (as mentioned earlier in this thread) is fake for reasons widely known among collectors - they are put in the same awkward position vis-a-vis AQ as I am in proving the Easter Bunny is false.

Antiquorum, it seems, is operating like a big bureaucratic machine more focused on the bottom line in terms of sales than actually being accountable to its potential buyers. It is no less a minefield than Ebay but the worst part of it is that it seems to produce false credibility on the vintage watch market.

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