CA1212-1
I wasn't expecting to buy this one, in fact I wasn't even really looking... but at the same time I've always wanted an older Formula 1 Chronograph and I knew I would pick one up sooner or later. So when I spotted this on eBay the other day at less the £300 I was immediately interested. I had been looking at a similar one with a blue dial, but even on a (damaged) rubber strap it was way over £400 and for a nice mint one on a bracelet it was more like £650, which seems a lot for a twenty year old F1!
I'd also come across a nice yellow dial version on eBay but that was even more money (£750+) which made this CA1212-1 look all the more appealing, but of course I assumed it would shoot up at the last minute like they all seem to do. So I watched and waited, and come the last day it was still only about £320 with an hour to go, but I assumed it would go for at least £400-450.
With a coupe of minutes to go someone pushed it up to £330 while I was mulling over my bid. The pictures were good, but not brilliant and it was only really when I found another listing offering a similar CA1212-1 with really great photos (but a £755 price tag!) that I became super interested. But still I was undecided about the dial colour Ideally I would have liked a blue or yellow dial, but I really didn't want to stump up the extra coin, and crucially, this white dial had a full bracelet.
So I wanted it, but if I was to settle for the white dial I decided I wanted it at a good price. So I clicked on the bid box and initially entered £412, then reduced it to £407, then £392. I bid with seven seconds to go, which is always nerve wracking as I've lost out due to a slow signal before, but strategically it is advantageous as it doesn't give other bidders time to react. The page refreshed, showing me as the winning bidder with 4 seconds to go at £340. I waited for the price to jump up, but instead the seconds ticked away and I was the winner.
I must admit I was a little bit surprised, more than a little bit actually... and I think because I hadn't expected to win at that price a little bit of buyer's remorse crept in. This was exacerbated when I noticed that the right hand sub-dial wasn't resetting properly in the picture. You'd think I would have been super clued up on that after my 'Searacer' debacle, and I was already composing my return email in my head before the the day was out.
But, the description clearly stated that the chrono worked properly, so I tried to remain calm and reasoned that as long as the subdial functioned (which the one on the Searacer didn't at all) then it should be okay because I could reset it manually. Yes, I guess I could have contacted the seller about it, but I reasoned that as this person clearly didn't know much about their watch I'd rather they didn't start trying to reset it before I got hold of it!
So a couple of days of worrying later my box arrived, along with a separate envelope containing the F1 Chrono catalogue I posted about on Friday. Taking the watch out of the box I was immediately struck by the condition, which is pretty amazing actually. The seller claimed the watch had lived in a drawer for a lot of it's life and while the missing lume pip and a few light scratches on the top and bottom of the case suggested this might be a little fanciful, the condition of the rest of the bezel and crystal couldn't really be faulted.
And though I initially wanted a coloured dial, once I got close up to the white dial I really fell in love with it. The white and black versions have a cool textured centre section which the coloured versions don't have and that really lifts it in my opinion. I'm not saying that all things being equal I would have chosen the white dial over the blue or yellow, but at the same time I wouldn't pay an extra 50-80% for the privilege either! The white is really, really nice especially as it does have a decent splash of red on the running seconds sub-dial and also with the coloured dials you don't get the lumed Arabic numerals either, which still work surprisingly well for a watch originally purchased in 1999. Not to mention of course that the white dial does make a nice background for the classic green and red TAG Heuer logo.
These two pictures are from the other eBay sale I found (the one for £755), which really show the watch off well.
The only thing I would say is that at 37mm it is a little bit dinky. I do have other watches around this size and they also seem a little small, but this one seems that little bit smaller. I don't know if it's maybe because we are used to seeing F1s in 40,41 and 43mm now, whereas the other watches like the Kirium and S/EL are of their 'time'... and so we accept them as they are. It's kind of ironic that one of the reasons I sold my 40mm WAH1110 was because it was 'too small'... but, well... I can live with it. It would help if my wrist wasn't quite so big of course, maybe it will look better in a few months when I've lost a bit more weight!
And yes, thankfully when I received the watch, the first thing I did was start the chrono, which functioned incredibly crisply as if it had hardly ever been used (the rotating bezel is also incredibly fresh) and on pulling out the crown I was indeed able to reset the 1/10 of a second sub-dial manually, which made me very happy - especially as I didn't want to have to send the catalogue back!
No comments:
Post a Comment