This one is definitely one where rather than Chuck, Jeff Made Me Do It. Once you named this a Shauntavia I had to have one, whether I like it or not (I do actually, a little).

If it's any consolation, I had a pretty big (and stupid) bid in there just because I felt my collection really needed one of these. So it's good there weren't two OtDer's driving up the price too much for each other - even though it still went for a pretty decent price.

So is it a fake? I am not sure, but one thing which really intrigued me about the watch for sale was the hands. If indeed Heuer did make an oddball manual Autavia in small quantities in the mid 70's it is very likely it would have these hands - these are the hands used on the also slightly odd ball (and pretty rare) Autavia GMT 741603. Here's a picture of one from Arno's collection, courtesy of OtD. The hands are exactly the same as on the "Shauntavia", making me think that it is perhaps indeed an original package.

Was there was some order in in Heuer production (these unusual hands) for the 7741 based variants of cal12 look alikes? Maybe....I think it was Einstein who said:
"Heuer doesn't play dice with the universe". OK, maybe he wasn't talking about Heuer, but he did work in the Swiss patent office so you never know....