OWNED: MONACO - The Paradoxical Superstar (Book)

You may remember a few weeks ago there was a photo competition on the Calibre 11 Forum, for which I submitted numerous entries including a photo of my yellow dial Aquaracer Calibre S surrounded by yellow M&Ms with a TAG Heuer shield made of red and green M&Ms. To be honest it wasn't my favourite photo, the watch was a little out of focus I thought, but I guess it was quite 'inventive' and ultimately it was picked as one of the winning entries by David and Hubert, which meant that I won a copy of this lovely book!

The Monaco is an obvious 'missing piece' from my collection, and one that I hope to eventually acquire. I came so close to buying a Monaco 24 a few years ago, if it hadn't had a scratch on it I think I would have gone for it; this was when the price fell right down to about £5,000 in the Bicester outlet. But it was the grey and orange one, not my favoured black and silver, so it's probably for the best that I didn't buy it as it probably would always have been a 'second best' watch, which is not something you want when spending that kind of money!

I'm pleased to see that the book covers all aspects of the Monaco, including the Monaco 24, the Monaco 69 and the ladies / unisex pieces. All too often books focus on the 'obvious' to the detriment of peripheral elements, but in doing so they generally rehash the same old information. I generally find it's much more interesting to read about the not so good times or the lesser known periods of the subject, like if you were reading a book about a band. it's more interesting to read about the rough times they went through than the times when they were riding high, because everyone knows about that already.

The book is fairly light on text, but you can't really complain when there are so many fantastic pictures to look at, the only 'obvious' missing model for me is the black dial Monaco 24, but the book does feature the orange and grey, blue and white and 'Gulf' branded variants so you can't really whine about that.

I haven't really had time to sit down and read the book properly yet, but there are chapters about the movements utilised in the Monaco over the years and also a chapter about the hunt for Steve McQueen's Monaco which look interesting (especially for me as I saw the watch in question in the museum last year).

Unfortunately this isn't something you are going to be able to order from Amazon, if you want a copy you really need to be talking nicely to an Authorised Distributor or someone at a TAG Heuer boutique. Not that I would sell mine, but these do appear on eBay; but you can expect to pay a pretty penny to secure one.