CanadianDriver Feature: Car Themed Watches...

CanadianDriver Feature: Car Themed Watches... While casting about for something else today I came across this article on Car-Themed watches from the CanadianDriver site. As I haven't seen this mentioned by anyone else, I thought I would... Click on the picture to go to the article... Enjoy! -- Chuck

"Autoweek" Heuer Carrera fetches over $2k on eBay…

Exceedingly uncommon "Autoweek" Heuer Carrera fetches over $2k on eBay… Occasional OTD forum participant Jeff Meyer apparently decided to part with this very uncommon Carrera. To be honest I'm a bit surprised it went for so little, considering that a plain jane mid-1960's white dial Carrera should fetch well over $1,600 these day but I believe that may be to some confusion about the logo... Back in the "Heuer Glory Days" in the 1960's and 1970's Heuer's were frequently advertized in many automotive magazines. Competition Press/Autoweek was a clientle that was tailor-made for the stopwatches, daskboard and wrist chronometres that Heuer sold. While I do not have an extensive collection of AutoWeeks from that time, my father was a subscriber for many many years and I remember the ad's and Autoweek's logo very well... Modern "Autoweek.com" logo... What I suspect happened at some time was Autoweek had a special run of Carrera's made, either for staff or for subscription premiums or offered them in the magazine. In any of those instances, there were likely not very many made and their history is a particularly interesing one. Congratulations to Nic on his new purchase! -- Chuck

C.O.S.C. Chronometre Numbers for 2004...

I recently ran across the COSC numbers for the year 2004... It's interesting that Omega's numbers are up nearly 75,000 pieces over the COSC numbers for 2000 while both Rolex and Breitling's numbers are down. Perhaps the Planet Ocean's sales will cause a furthing of this trend... -- Chuck

Mike Kobald interview on WatchTime site...

I see that WatchTime has an interesting interview with Michael Kobald of Kobald Watches on their website. I found the part where he describes how he came to meet James Gandolfini to be especially humorious... ONE ON ONE WITH MIKE KOBOLD, FOUNDER OF KOBOLD WATCHES Enjoy! -- Chuck

Interesting account of 24-hour Breitlings & Mercury...

You ever wonder why a Breitling Cosmonaut was worn by Scott Carpentier on the fourth Mercury mission and never mentioned again? I received an email late last week which was very interesting: Greetings, Chuck: I've very much enjoyed reading your informative articles on Omega SpeedMasters, and thought you might like to know about something I came across regarding the Mercury Astronauts and watches. It is clear that they predated much of the NASA activity with regard to the Omega Speedy and the gruesome testing performed to find the best possible time piece for the space program. However, I just obtained a recent book written by Walter Schirra and Ed Buckbee in which Schirra says during an interview with the surviving Mercury 7 members... "Do you remember a fellow by the name of Harold Johnson who came into our M7 office and gave us each a 24-hour analog hour wrist watch to wear? We were to wear them to become accustomed to the 24-hour clock because the worldwide tracking network would be using that time during our flights. About three weeks later, Harold came back and one of us asked, "Harold, what time is it?" He looked at the analog watch on one arm, shook his head, pulled up his sleeve on his other arm and looked at his regular watch and said "It's about ten minutes until 12". That was the end of that watch." No mention of the make of the "24-hour" watch is made, but I thought this was quite interesting, and had not read of this before. Thought you might want to know about it for future reference. The book by Schirra and Buckbee is entitled "The REAL Space Cowboys", published by Apogee Books. My copy came signed by both authors, and I'm so pleased to have an autograph of one of the original Mercury 7. Buckbee was involved with NASA from the Mercury days and worked with Dr. Wernher von Braun in developing the rockets for the US space program. So far, an excellent read! Keep up the great work, Chuck! Sincerely, Dxxxxx Lxxxxxxxxx I received permission from the person who contacted me to share this information publically. I added the link to Amazon for the book by Schirra and Buckbee... Enjoy! -- Chuck

Ming Thein's flighty snaps added to flightmaster article...

"Photohorologer" Ming Thein contacted me yesterday with a slew of outstanding and dramatic flightmaster photo's he had taken of a new flightmaster c.911 acquisition of one of his cousin's... Ming's cousin was gracious enough to let Ming photograph his flighty, and Ming was kind enough to permit me to share them with you all. Click on the photo below to see Ming's photo's...

-- Chuck