Reply With QuoteIt's to do with the average age of the forum.
Not wishing to rain on a seller's chips (his watch seems a very fair price), I decided to post this here instead of in SC.
My question is why Heuer branded watches are so highly prized?
For example, they made 7750 chronos in a case that seems to have been shared by dozens of minor brands and yet one with "Heuer" on the dial will sell for thousands whereas a, seemingly similar, watch from another, lesser known, maker will sell for low hundreds?
Someone on here (I think) once described Heuers as 'effortlessly masculine' and that's definitely true in my view - They exude a 'cool' that few other brands do (certainly not Rolex, Panerai or Breitling, for example - Perhaps Omega come - or came -close, but that may again just be me).
I can't explain it and I wonder if it's simply a case of being caught up in the same kind of herd instinct that gets sniffy about TAG-Heuers (something I find myself falling into without any 1st hand experience of any of their watches and actually liking the look of more than a few).
Is it just because as a brands they vanished? Is it the '60s/'70s GP driver associations? Or is it just some intangible element that has made the WIS world decide that Heuers are cool and others aren't?
Anyone any closer to understanding the "Heuer-Hype"?
M
It's to do with the average age of the forum.
For me it’s very simple. The Heuer logo looks really good, super cool in fact. The Tag-Heuer logo is terrible, a complete mess, it’s a logo that actually manages to clash with itself. I guess in addition to this, the Heuer logo appeared on and enhanced some real classics, while the TH logo appeared on some dreadful watches, even if it also appeared on some good ones too. TH also ushered in some decades that taste forgot, that don’t wear well today, while the more sober Heuer’s ooze vintage cool. In the end they feel like two very different brands, even if they sometimes appear on the same watches. Branding is quite powerful in the end, and the design of any element that appears on the dial is all important.
It's all in a name. Obviously people like the Heuer name/logo
As you say, the older ones share everything bar name with other 'brands'.
It can't just be about the watch otherwise they'd just buy it in one of the other names and save a fortune.
Unfortunately they've also become very fashionable with these US websites and collectors.
There's many examples of this type of thing from vintage Breitling to watches about today. I sniffed out a watch that's appeared recently and found a different name variant of the same watch from the same manufacturing company. One is almost 4 times the prIce of the other.
Can be applied to many watches.
It is what it IS.
Break down the component parts of for eg a Rolex sub and a Steinhart homage sub,you tell me why there is such a HUGE difference in price?......MARKETING,good aren't they Rolex.
But we all know how prices of those Rolex subs have gone very recently,does the Steinhart or similar increase the same...NO.
Rolex 316L SS is the same as all other watches made of the same 316L SS.
Sapphire glass is Sapphire glass.
A ceramic bezel on a Rolex costs?,on a Steinhart?....why the difference price wise?.
Rolex bracelet how much?,A top quality rep of ebay(they are out there,you know it!) How much?!.
Lets not dwell too much on the last statement re rep/fake bracelets etc,it's stainless steel,Which I and You have on our watches and equally as good!,some of my Rolex subs have been worn on the same to keep the original pristine,which can go onto another discussion about buy them to wear them,again something we've all done,whether to keep the bracelet/leather or rubber totally as new.........for the time we want to sell it,for more than that Steinhart for eg 😉
The Autavias, Carreras, Monacos, Montreals, Silverstones and one or two more Heuers were unique (at least until Heuer started making them for other manufacturers like Zodiac etc) and extremely nice designs. The Carrera started off at 36mm, the Autavias the same size as a Sub. The automatic Autavias are 42mm, and they're all perfectly proportioned. I'm wearing a Valjoux 72 Autavia today and for me it's a perfect piece of design, plus it's practical (I have the chrono running at the moment while I time something, and the 1-12 hour bezel set to when I took some paracetamol). That these watches were worn by racing drivers just makes them a bit cooler, it doesn't make them any more attractive to me. I think the 42mm automatic Autavia 1163 in Viceroy colours is one of the best pieces of watch design out there. Really rare Heuers sell for bonkers money but a lot of the time there's a reason they're rare, and the 1163V (and all the other non-Viceroy versions) sold so well for Heuer not just because it was cheap but because it's a bloody good piece of design and an excellent watch. On top of which 42mm is slap-bang in the middle of where we are in terms of size these days.
I never bothered with the cheaper ones like the example on SC and agree with you that the price is bonkers, even if it is market price. But then prices of some Heuers have gone through the roof and kept on going.
If it were me though I'd not bother with the Heuer branding and would go for a £500-£750 version with some other name on it.
An 1163V just sold on SC, listed at £2,250 or so, and it's a much better proposition despite being misdescribed (it's been incorrectly refinished by hand and has lost all of its original brushed/polished finish and sharp edges between the two). On the other hand if the new owner reserves a slot with Abel Court in Belgium and sends it over in a year or so (about Abel's usual waiting time) along with around £500, it will come back perfectly serviced and with the case lapped to correct finish. Sure it will still have a worn bezel insert (NOS replacements still exist, maybe £500 each) but it will be a perfectly sorted. Completely done, with NOS insert, it will be a couple of hundred more than the cost of a new Pelagos or whatever. For one of the best looking vintage chronos money can buy.
"A man of little significance"
Some genuinely iconic designs & some proper motorsport heritage.
Andy
Wanted - Damasko DC57
Exactly,I haven’t got any but after watching this the other day I wanted a good old classic model (or two).Originally Posted by andy tims
https://youtu.be/K8KIpY59LKU
TBH the love has bemused me at times.
I'm old enough to remember them being a cheap fairly unloved watch and pretty much rebadged run of the mill stuff.
I omit the Monaco from that description as that is truly iconic design. It is definitely its motor racing affiliation that has buoyed interest in recent years.
Back in the day, $88 and one pack top.....
Cheers,
Neil.
That’s a coincidence I was just reading about those.
http://www.onthedash.com/docs/CompareViceroys.shtml
We are a notoriously fickle bunch, and an awful lot comes into play with this type of thing.
Also, vintage Heuers don't have a universally high valuation, there are lows.
No doubt, the average age of collectors for whom the golden age of Heuer - Motorsport tie-ins has massively boosted some Heuer models. One might argue that this was also the golden age of Motorsport - the best combination of TV exposure, speed, danger and cool the world has seen. That also helps boost associated values.
But this doesn't just affect Heuer - Universal Geneve Compax Rindt, anyone???
The fact that the Cal 12 (and family) is a chronograph module under a base movement seems to have bypassed the usual WIS-dom that modular chronos are ill-regarded.
There are other things that affect value too. Heuer Bunds are (comparatively) cheap compared to many military chronos of similar age. I personally believe that this is because too many of them have been subject to excessive restoration, with new parts strewn around far too much.
Compared to their chronos, the Heuer 3-handers also do fairly poorly.
So I don't believe it is just a brand thing, it is a set of desires and market based on associations.
The only brand aspect which I do think is true is that all the really cool stuff was gone by the time TH existed. i.e. NO Autavias or Monacos are marked TH
Where prices actually sit for many of these things varies massively.
Hodinkee will get away with selling things for 2 to 3 times the price they might fetch on a closed forum sale (like here, where SC is conditionally viewed and unsearched by watch recon and so forth).
It seems that well-publicised auctions are also generating silly prices.
Chrono24 seems to try and keep up, but over-valued stuff there hangs around like the aftermath of a spinach dhaal.
And Ebay sells quite low now, it seems not to generate the bids that it used to.
Dave
And yet in period the Monaco didn't sell well and wasn't terribly well regarded, and AFAIK it has zero motor racing affiliation.
From what I understand Heuers weren't sold in jewellers in the 1960s - you bought them from specialist shops selling timing equipment, hence the relative rarity of them from that period. I would imagine the rebadged run-of-the-mill watches you're thinking of were from the very late 1970s and early '80s when Heuer was fighting a losing battle against much more fashionable and smaller digital and quartz watches. 1960s and early 1970s Carreras and Autavias and early 1970s Monacos and Montreals were only rebadged when the likes of Zodiac paid Heuer to print their name on the dial.
"A man of little significance"
Do you mean the Heuers that didn't have chrono functions?
"A man of little significance"
Plus the exchange rate was about £1: $2.50 in '72 so that would be about £40!TBH the love has bemused me at times.
I'm old enough to remember them being a cheap fairly unloved watch and pretty much rebadged run of the mill stuff.
I omit the Monaco from that description as that is truly iconic design. It is definitely its motor racing affiliation that has buoyed interest in recent years.
Back in the day, $88 and one pack top.....
Sent from my A0001 using Tapatalk
Can't see what all the fuss is with them myself
Only vintage Heuer chronograph I was able to afford was when the Heuer Bund was under the radar about 6-7 years ago they have double in price but so had the vintage Heuer autavia chronograph I could not afford 5-6 years ago. The Heuer Bund is now slowly catching up to the Heuer autavia now in price. What I like about the Bund is it's military and a Heuer the best of both worlds and glad I got it before crazy prices I could not afford it today just glad I was not a flipper a vintage watch collectors biggest mistake.
Now tell me this is not COOL
Last edited by River Rat; 1st December 2017 at 20:31.
Yes, Bo Derek wore one, I think.......
Can't see what all the fuss is with them myself
I mean real Autavias, not re-issues, of course
D
Price is just a function of demand and supply.
I like them but the prices are out of my range.
Happy with my 64 re-edition Carrera.
In case the OP hasn't noticed, good looking modern sized vintage watches with some historical "cool" are insanely expensive regardless of the brand.
Is a 114060 a re-issue?
I really like the design of vintage Heuer Diver and Chronograph watch. But the price is super sky high as a vintage watch for me. If Tag redoes the same design with similar size I wouldn't mind to pick up one.
Is that really true? There are lots of vintage chronographs with a similar design and even movement for only a few hundred quid on ebay and the like.
Really, got any examples or links?
Search function "vintage chronograph watches" on ebay
70's chronographs seem to be generally of a larger size but this sort of reminds me of the chronograph Suisse watches that go for double the price of almost identical watches with the same movement, case, dial etc....
Last edited by robert75; 1st December 2017 at 23:13.
I think you can see lovely examples of poor mans Heuers however last time I looked the Zodiac branded Carrera was certainly not cheap! Le Jour , Nivada , Clebar , Zodiac worth looking at
Agreed but a lot more than the “few hundred” quoted above.
They are nice watches with the McQueen factor. A bit like Panerai and their Stallone factor.
Never owned one myself, perhaps because of the Tag Heuer stuff, plus would prefer a Zenith if I needed a Chrono
Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Obviously the OP is referring to the Pasadena on SC at the moment and seems to be sharing a popular misconception about the case design. This case was not used by any other manufacturer and is totally unlike the LeJour etc which is often quoted as being the same. However, it is correct that the Pasadena case can be found with different branding, (Lederer, Tourneau and a couple of others) but these were all manufactured by Heuer. Similarly, the 7750 Montreal used a case unique to Heuer (very similar to the Omega Speedmaster MKii) but was also produced by Heuer for other brands.
For me, the one thing that sets these Heuers head and shoulders above their contemporaries is their clean design. Just compare the dial and hands of these 7750 'big' Heuers and the similar 510.501 etc with similarly styled watches of the era. For example, while the LeJour has a similar dial it is badly let down by the shorter hands with fussy lume. While it is closer in design to the Porsche Design it is just a pale imitation.
I sort of missed your point. TAG weren’t involved with ‘real’ Autavias, so you’d only see it on a ‘reissue’, if at all going by the recent ones.
For me, part of the attraction is the modern day sizing of the Autavia, plus the immense amount of variety that’s of interest to me. How many other manufacturers, other than a couple of Japanese ones, produce so many well executed versions of effectively the same model?
With the Autavia, there’s manual, automatic, date, no, date, two subdial, three subdial, gmt, plus different colour combinations and niche functions.
This is allows me to have the same model that are sufficiently different to justify, rather than an an additional or different colour line of text (although I get that too, it’s just not for me).
It’s a combination of the heritage, the diversity, the styling and to an extent, the cudos of the vintage brand, that make it attractive to me. Unfortunately, the recent price explosion has made it less accessible and attractive, although this hasn’t really affected my interest and continual search for the next piece.
The OPs point was all about the valuation (excess or otherwise) of Heuer-branded watches (all by definition vintage).
And some of that is in direct contrast with the watches branded Tag Heuer.
My point was to agree that the uplift in value is associated with Heuer (and not Tag Heuer), but showing that some of that is purely because the goleden age of Heuer was over before Tag came to their financial rescue.
I admit that the company now produces Autavias and Monacos. But from the 1980s (pre-Tag) until about 4 years ago (with the first Autavia re-issue, the Siffert coloured version being pictured) it didn't. At all.
Sure, you can get the Lemania-powered 1000 series chronos with either brand on the dial. But a vintage AUtavia with TH on it? No
So "Tag Heuer"-branded Autavias and Monacos can only accurately be termed used, and not vintage, as none of them are old enough.
As such, their value is dropping as a used item, rather than rising as a vintage item.
Dave
The first TH Autavia reissue (like the Stiffert shown above) was in the early to mid 2000s I believe and the Monaco reissues started in late 1990s I think. Carrera reissues started in the mid 90s so there's only really a 10 year period between Heuer becoming TH and then starting to reissue Heuer classics.
It seems that Tag realised how iconic the Heuer back catalogue was before collectors did. I do wonder how much these TH reissues kick-started the vintage Heuer market and the resulting huge appreciation in prices.
Last edited by watchcollector1; 2nd December 2017 at 15:39.
Sorry, badly put. I meant the Monaco as an icon.
The "motor racing affiliation" was meant for Heuer as a whole not just the Monaco.
Re Heuers only being sold in specialist shops, not sure I believe that TBH. Why would they limit their exposure? If they only sold through specialist shops I'm sure they wouldn't have lasted too long.
I'm probably older than you and remember Heuer ads in magazines at the time and marvelling how cheap they were compared to Breitlings similar offerings.
I have an original ad from Playboy in 1969 showing the first cal 11/12. Nothing mentioned about specialist shops.
Re the Monaco - non cooler IMO...
Cheers,
Neil.
It hasn't bypassed me Dave.
Hideously ugly movements that were designed, probably with hardly any input input from Heuer themselves, as the first piggy back chrono movement.
A joint effort from Breitling, Heuer, DD and Buren.
Buren was picked as it had a suitably thin micro rotor auto movement that Dubois-Depraz could design a chrono module to slap onto and not be incredibly thick.
The race had been to be the first with an auto chrono movement and people are forever arguing the toss over it but but Seiko and Zenith's design had been built from the ground up, unlike the cal 11/12.
Here's my version of the Hamilton/Buren movement that was used as a base for the Heuer etc movement.
You can see how slim it was for an auto.
Cheers,
Neil.
Yes, mid/late1960s Motorsport magazine. 16th of a page or so b&w ad.....£15 and some shillings IIRC. Always referred to as Autavia not Heuer (again from memory) with the model name. I'll see if I can dig some old copies out and scan.
Please do.
Cheers,
Neil.
The 64 re-edition is the very epitome of why Heuer is viewed with love!
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Steve didn't like the Monaco, apparently he only wore it when he had to. His faves were a post war Hanhart/Tutima & 5512 Sub. The 80's Heuer Pilot's are worth a mention, big,
great movements, fabulous design, auto or manual, grey or black dial so plenty of choice, A proper Pilots watch and IMHO one of the last classic Heuer's.
There are a number of factors already mentioned, and here's another. John Glenn and the first (known) Swiss watch in space, albeit a stopwatch.
Credit: Tag Heuer/Smithsonian
I think he wore it because it looked different, not because he had to. It was his production company making his film, no one told him what to do.
I did however once ask Jonathan Williams, who was the only professional driver working full time throughout the filming, if he'd been given a Monaco after the filming and he said they all disliked them and though they were very ugly and unfashionable.
"A man of little significance"
Someone posted this on the Marcos forum recently.
Interesting for a number of reasons, not least the prices
M
Nothing wrong with a vintage Heuer at all....
That’s an absolute stunner,how old and what size?
Thanks! Its from the late 1970s / early 1980's I think - bought it NOS in the early 1990's. Think its 38mm - bit smaller than many today, but oh so classy. Need to get it serviced and back in use I think. There's quite a bit of info here - https://www.calibre11.com/ultimate-guide-heuer-verona/
Must admit that I've never seen another. No idea how rare they are these days. Just love the classic, simple design.
The lack of innovation or play safe with reissues or homages pieces within the watch world is just fuelling this looking back with some faux fondness on brands and models.
This vintage love was no were to be found a few years ago but as like any fad it suddenly explodes on the scene, prices rocket then plunge once the fad is over and people have moved on to the next lifestyle choice must have.
That's a pretty bold statement ;-) I think it's fair to say the love for vintage has been around for many many years, it perhaps went much more mainstream a few years ago and if anything, brands caught on to it quite late. They did however eventually react, by which time it was obvious to many that their historical watches looked way better than their current collections. So many reissues, with pointless (in this day and age) details like riveted bracelets may well be a passing trend, and with honourable exceptions such as certain Grand Seikos, they rarely catch the charm of the original. But I also think that the love of vintage design classics is anything but 'faux fondness', it was there long before it was in fashion magazines, and will remain long after they have moved on to the next big thing. I'm not sure it's exactly the lack of innovation that fuels the love of vintage, as the fact that 90% of modern watches are completely horrible, oversized, ostentatious vulgar baubles with no sophistication whatsoever - while we're making bold statements!
Last edited by Itsguy; 24th January 2018 at 19:09.
I’ve been buying vntage watches since 1994! The fact that 30- somethings with beards and skinny jeans find them appealing doesn’t mean the whole vintage watch scene is a recent fad.........that’s one of the advantages with getting old, provided your memory’s still OK you see things in the correct perspective.
Paul
Last edited by walkerwek1958; 25th January 2018 at 00:03.
I’ve been buying vntage watches since 1994! The fact that 30- somethings with beards and skinny jeans find them appealing doesn’t mean the whole vintage watch scene is a recent fad.........that’s one of the advantages with getting old, provided your memory’s still OK you see things in the correct perspective.
It amuses me when people try to get into vintage watches but set unrealistic criteria based on current watch sizes. Part of the cool appeal of vintage models is their lack of bulk, if you don’t get that maybe it’s better to stay with the current stuff.
Paul
Last edited by walkerwek1958; 25th January 2018 at 00:41.
I picked one up a few years ago from Nic Green - I understand they were just made for the American market for a year or two, 78/79ish. It wears larger than its Carrera brother, is considerably rarer and costs just a fraction of the price. One of the few watches I feel really chuffed to own!
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Strong designs, strong branding, big back catalogue with evocative names, motorsport associations - perfectly-timed to pick up from when vintage Rolex went silly and ride the chrono trend. Obviously, the hype has priced some beyond reality, but fashion costs...
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