FEATURE: How Should TAG Heuer Have Celebrated 50 Years of the Monaco?

CAW211V.FC6466

I'm guessing that by now most of my readers will have seen the five '50 Year Anniversary' Monaco watches that are coming out this year. Obviously the CAW211V is the only one that's been 'officially' released so far, but.... the internet. The idea that you can send information to dealers to drum up sales while at the same time keeping everything under wraps is, in short, hilarious. If you look hard enough you can even find dealers offering to take your money for watches that are months away from even being announced (though whether these dealers are actually going to be able to deliver said watches is a moot point).

And while we haven't got the best quality shots of the new watches (I won't be posting the embargoed pictures on here by the way) they do give us a pretty clear indication of what is and what is not on the horizon. So there's no round pushers and there's no 'Black Lord', at least not yet...

I've been saying this for a while now but it bears repeating - I never in a million years believed TAG was going to re-issue the 1969 Monaco as it was. The original looks much like it's been bench sawn out of a steel ingot and while that's fine for a vintage piece I can't see how TAG Heuer (or any company really) could make a watch so 'roughly' and charge several thousand pounds for it today. History is one thing, but the justification for the modern price of these watches is at least partly the level of finishing the piece receives, and while it's 'classic', for me at least, the round pushers on the square case grates (strangely though, not on the Monaco 24!).

Over on the Calibre 11 forum the talk of the last few months has been largely centred around three ideas: an original re-issue (never going to happen), a 'Dark Lord' (still a possibility, albeit probably not with round pushers) and the incorporation of the Heuer 02 movement into the Monaco. My main issue with the last one is that surely the Heuer 02 will then be more expensive than the Calibre 11 'Steve McQueen' style watch that seemingly 'everybody' wants. I don't know how many Calibre 11s TAG sell versus the Calibre 12 (with the crown on the right side) but the fact that they make both (albeit one of which is branded TAG Heuer, not Heuer) suggests that not everybody likes the Calibre 11. Including me actually, that gap between the pushers on the right hand side of the case looks weird to my eyes.

Could the Heuer 02 'become' the new Calibre 12? I guess, but it would make a mockery really of the pricing structure if it was possible to buy an in-house movement cheaper than an ETA based one. And there's no way they are going to make the Calibre 12 dearer than the flagship Calibre 11. It would actually make a lot more sense to me to put the Heuer 02 movement in the old Monaco 24 case and launch that as a new 'Monaco' model for people who want a Monaco but who don't want an overtly 'retro' watch. People like me, in fact!

I would really love for there to be a new 'modern' Monaco again, I really liked the Monaco 24s and came so, so close to buying one once when the prices in the outlets bottomed out at just a smidge over £5000. But alas, I didn't and now the cheapest you can pick them up pre-owned (from anywhere decent anyway) is probably £6500, after all these watches were upwards of £8,500 new.

What then of the 'Dark Lord'? Well, given that we've already dismissed the idea of the round pushers returning, any supposed 'Dark Lord' edition would likely be scoffed at by those in the know. So perhaps it's better they don't make it, as it will satisfy few of the original fans (albeit it's entirely possible it could create its own, new fans), besides Mr Bamford has already made something very similar to a 'modern Dark Lord', albeit with some chequered flags on the dial.

The other super-obvious thing for TAG Heuer to have done for a 50th Anniversary celebration was to make a solid yellow gold Monaco. This has been down before so it's not such a crazy idea, however... price would have been an issue. Solid gold Carreras sell for about £15,000 so how many could they have actually hoped to sell, maybe 100? Sure, Omega just launched the solid gold Speedmaster for £54,000 or something like that, but there's probably a lot more (richer) Omega collectors out there, plus their watch was itself a re-issue of something that was actually made back in the day and given to the astronauts and the President of the United States (amongst others). But if TAG had (or possibly have) made a solid gold Monaco, I would guess it would/will either have a white or black dial, nobody's going to take silly risks on the dial when you're trying to shift solid gold watches for big money. 

So, maybe what they've done is not such a bad thing, five watches in very low numbers at reasonable prices that look pretty unusual (some more than others admittedly), I'm just glad they didn't take the easy route and churn out another blue dial Monaco with a 50th anniversary engraving on the back. I'm not knocking the 40th anniversary piece at all, it's a lovely watch - but come on, we needed something more. But then again, I'm not entirely convinced these five watches are the full extent of the 50th anniversary collection, and I won't be at all surprised if by the Autumn there isn't indeed a blue dial 50th Anniversary Calibre 11 as well.