CAW2114.FT6021
There is, I suppose, a fair chance that you may have seen this before, and perhaps your first thought was 'Wait, what... there's a Monaco on a rubber strap!', that certainly was my reaction and I must admit it is just slightly incongruous. But, having said that... close up it's not nearly as odd as you might think. Sure, I'm not crazy about this particular rubber strap's 'design', but it doesn't look as inherently wrong as you might assume. In fact, to my eyes it looks perfectly fine. I'm not sure what kind of rubber strap I would choose to fit if it was my decision to make, but the fact that TAG Heuer have fitted one at all shows that it can be done and relatively successfully. I can't recall seeing this strap fitted to any other watches, but a quick Google shows that you can get this on a few other Monacos, but no other model ranges and it looks like a straightforward switch out to fit to any 22mm lug width watch case.
Leaving the rubber strap to one side, this really is an excellent colour scheme (when did 'colour-way' become a thing exactly*?) for the Monaco and I know I'll probably be in the minority here but much preferable to the classic 'McQueen' blue to my eyes. Long term readers may remember a post I wrote detailing my 6 favourite Monacos and number one was a watch which looked very similar to this, albeit with a carbon fibre dial. This model would make a nice alternative to that and perhaps with a Hirsch carbon fibre strap with some red trim it could look rather special for a bit less money... Hmm, there's a tempting idea!
*According to Google it was 1950, although it's current usage apparently peaked in 2009.
Around the back it's your typical display case back and a matching steel clasp, and the great thing about this being a Calibre 12 of course is that you get a nice subtle TAG Heuer logo rather than the rather unsubtle, HEUER logo as found on the recent Gulf variant. I don't know whether I'm getting used to the square case or what, but I actually thought this looked smaller than I expected. I'm assured it is 39mm, but I was surprised, especially with it having a steel case (the black ones usually trick you into thinking they look smaller).
I think I may have found my perfect Monaco here, I just hope one turns up at Watchfinder sometime and I can trade my CF1112 Aquaracer in for it (assuming it doesn't sell on eBay in the meantime). If you fancy this one then Bicester village have this one reduced from £4350 down to £3045, but rubber strap or not, you might want to jump on this because I'm sure it won't hang around.
EDIT: Of the three delivered last week, two have already been sold, and incidentally Watchfinder do have one of these, but it's £300 more pre-owned!
Read about my top six favourite Monacos by clicking the link below:
https://tagheuerenthusiast.blogspot.com/2018/04/feature-my-top-five-monacos.html
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