Nail on the head Mark, when we mention numbers seen we should remember that we are talking of a small pool of collectors, perhaps only hundreds strong, with literally billions of people on the planet there can be no doubt there are many more Heuers than we think tucked away in peoples drawers or by people who don't care about such matters as "numbers known" or anything other than wearing their watch to tell the time.

Your rule of thumb seems sound, 1-3 seen would suggest at least 10 and 20-30 at least 100. I'd be suprised (apart from special order dials or "testers" which were never intended to be production models and may well have been unique) if dials were printed in smaller than 100 batches (as numerous people who worked for Heuer have opined that 100 was normal lowest print), many possibly more. Still even 200-300 would be rare in the context of vintage watch production, certainly rarer than most of your rare Rolex executions and also rarer than the likes of original Zenith El Primeros etc.

Rich

: : more interesting to me is, wher we have found them: all 4 I
: have hold in my hands in the past 12 years came from ebay in
: germany.

: It pays to remember that, when we are talking vintage Heuer, we are
: largely talking about a time when there weren't the plethora of
: limited editions that we see now. Most of the limited run
: watches are unintentional - they simply didn't sell as many as
: the manufacturer hoped.

: Some of the numbers being bandied about for various models recently
: will only apply to customer-dial watches, like the Indy, Volvo
: or MG watches. Everything else was made in at least the
: hundreds. It might surprise you that, even though the dial
: variant was not marked on the cases, most Heuers were produced
: in dial batches - so there is a run of Siffert dials,
: potentially discrete from Viceroy dials but often contiguous.
: It's the sort of thing that only comes to light from a systemic
: study of serial numbers and faetures of the watches involved.

: But now to come to Alex's interesting point, as promised by the
: title. Whilst there might not be limited edition runs as we
: understand them today, there are definitely some watches that
: seem to be limited to specific markets.

: There are a couple of Carrera models where literally every watch I
: have seen has been in Germany, or is traceable to there, for
: example. Others I have seen omitted from UK price lists whilst
: they feature on the identical catalogue for France or Germany.
: If you're recording info about your watches, and can find out
: where it originated, it tells a potentially interesting story,
: although one sometimes obfuscated by unscrupulous sellers who
: maintain a clearly messed-with watch is all original as
: purchased in [insert name of town here] by their dear, departed
: uncle/aunt/other relative...

: In terms of the numbers we see, I figure if we see 1, there are 9
: others out there, lost, abandoned or in the hands of people who
: just aren't interested in watches, especially the collecting
: scene. Maybe more.