Really special Autavia prototype for sale over at Chronotrader. Watch has the high-beat 28,800 Calibre 11 movement that Heuer was playing around with.

We've seen several high-beat prototypes, but only 1 or 2 of these bright orange dials.


I agree with the analysis over at Facebook that the dial is most likely original- but that the hands are from a later watch and a watchmaker has assembled the parts together. Still, a very, very rare dial!!

 

Very nice, I wonder how it is these actually make it out of the factory given their prototype status, do they just sell off the stock to recover costs of their development or do they just sort of disappear? Wonder if there are any modern CH80s disappearing if its the later

 

Yes, the price will be high.

To paraphrase what Chuck (I believe) and Jeff at OTD might say: don't confuse scarcity with value. Sure, there are only 1-2 of these, but would you put your money into this or a standard 1st-Gen Autavia? I'd go for the latter.

But if you are a collector who has all the normal Autavias, I can definitely see why you need this in the collection.

 

I think that's particularly the case with external features as all too often a franken assembled with unintended spares can can end up being sold as such. The upside down Omega Ploprofs that every dealer tries to claim is a "rare prototype" edition rather than a simple matter of having had its troublesome movement replaced with one that has a standard datewheel that only lines up with the dial when inverted is one that pops into mind in that category. At least with these hi-beats and various other movement experiments you know its not something anyone would have done just for the sake of increasing the value.

 

tease!