One of the things about being a vertical collector is that occasionally you can complete a "line" within that collection. Pretty difficult with Carreras, when there tends to be lots of variants within each model range, but easier from the 3rd generation onwards.

Now, I know quartz watches aren't most people's bag here, but there were some quartz watches in Heuer's carrera range, and I actually find the Twins, with their LCD and analogue displays quite interesting:

There are only 3 models in the Carrera Twin range, those two and a gold-plated version with a champagne dial. These things come up very rarely, but I always keep an eye out.

So was pleased to see a 371.255 CH come up recently on German eBay, though marked as for sending to Germany only. A quick email to the seller later and they were only too happy to send the watch elsewhere in the EU; very friendly seller in fact, and happy to exchange emails about the provenance of the watch and about watch collecting in general. It possibly helps that I can mail in (increasingly rusty) German, but this isn't the first time I've been able to get a watch that was for sale in Germany only. It's a good tip for the eBayers amongst us - don't restrict yourself to the eBay home site of your geographical location; the settings for a listing to show up on wider searches are a bit opaque and often a listing that was intended to show up worldwide only shows up in its "home" location. Secondly, chance a friendly email if the listing states postage in one country only - chances are the seller will be happy to help, I've rarely had a rude reply back and in that case, you might not have wanted to deal with them anyway. Thirdly, and importantly for us as Heuer collectors, is that not every watch was sold in every export region. I've seen UK price lists where it states for Verona Twins that the watch is not for sale in the UK. If I remember right, all my quartz Carreras have come from Germany or Austria, so it seems that the Carrera Twins were more prevalent there than in the UK too. So if a specific watch interests you, then see if some research can turn up where the watch was originally sold - not just for Heuers, there are German-market Speedmasters too, for example. I wonder whether the mystery Autavias we have talked about this week were single market watches.

But anyway, enough pre-amble, my champagne Carrera Twin has now arrived, and is really nice! Getting functioning versions of these now is getting harder, so it's always good to get one that works. That means I now have an example of every Carrera Twin model they produced (yeah, yeah, there were only 3 so not that much of an achievement perhaps, but it pleases me!).

Quick iPhone snap with its brothers and sisters:

And yes, the silver-dialled example and the time-only watch do need new batteries :) Reminds me of why I like the convenience of manual- and automatic-wind watches, service schedule notwithstanding. Jeff, will get batteries for those two and then work on getting some decent shots for use on OTD and its currently empty electronic Carreras section!