I have updated the webpage that covers this fake Index Mobile, adding the following daily report:
Update -- Thursday, November 13, 2008 -- Today, we received corroboration from two sources that Dubey & Schaldenbrand never made an Index Mobile chronograph for Heuer. First, Mme Cinette Robert, President and CEO of Dubey & Schaldenbrand, sent an e-mail confirming that, to her knowledge, Dubey never manufactured any chronograph for Heuer. She suggested that a Heuer dial had been added to an Index Mobile movement to create the watch being sold as Lot 39 (and seemed amused at the phrase, "custom made"). Second, the author of a article detailing the history of the Index Mobile chronographs sent an e-mail stating that, to his knowledge, the only companies that have produced Index Mobile chronographs were Dubey & Schaldenbrand (some of them under the name Edo), Comor, Berney, Eberhard and Breitling. He also suggested that for a person who had the right parts, it's easy to make an Index Mobile with any Landeron, Valjoux or Venus ebauche. That was the goal of George Dubey, when he created this simple rattrapante in the 1940's.
OK, so let's count up the experts on each side of the question. Those suggesting that this watch is a fake include (1) a senior official at Heuer in Switzerland (during the period), (2) a senior Heuer watchmaker (during the period), (3) the current President of Dubey & Schaldenbrand, who has been in the watch business throughout all relevant periods, (4) one of the two gentlemen who has written extensively about the history of the Index Mobile chronographs, and (5) one of the world's top experts in the history of chronographs, who also has a couple of them in his collection. And then we have Antiquorum suggesting that this is a "custom made" chronograph, with a later, upgraded movement. Maybe the real question here is the following: If a lawyer in Atlanta, Georgia can assemble this information with a little bit of efffort, why doesn't the esteemed auction house look into the history of the pieces that it is selling? Perhaps, in this instance, the more information you assemble, the lower the value of the watch? Or as they say in the U.S. Army, "don't ask, don't tell".
This will probably be the last pre-auction report . . . now, we wait for the auction, to be held Saturday afternoon, in Geneva!!
Jeff
