Very interesting information. Indeed, it's difficult to imagine the business case that would have motivated Heuer to use different dials for the Japanese market. Maybe brought to us by the same task force or committee that developed the Mappamundo for the Italian market? Yeh, right!!

Simplest explanation: a load of refinished or rejected dials.

Jeff

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: In 1971, Heuer were selling into 96 countries worldwide, although
: the majority of sales were into North America and Western
: Europe.

: The breakdown is as follows:

: US & Canada: 1970 43%, 1971 35%
: Western Europe: 1970 28%, 1971 33%
: Domestic: 1970 11%, 1971 14%
: ROW: 1970 18%, 1971 18%

: So Japan was only 1 of 70-80 odd countries making up 18% of Heuer
: sales. At this point they weren't particularly selective about
: which market got what - this would come along more in the late
: '70s, with certain models only being available in certain
: markets. For me, that makes it very unlikely that
: "special" dials were being created for specific
: markets, particularly a market that wasn't in the top 10 of
: Heuer's markets by country. Even less likely that such a dial
: would be noticeably lower quality than contemporary Heuer dials.