In stark contrast to 2018/19, 'Buying Experience' posts for 2020 have been pretty thin on the ground, indeed as it stands I am yet to buy a watch this year. Regular readers will know that last year I bought at least one a month, so this is a pretty big turnaround and the uncertainty of Coronavirus isn't exactly making me feel like splashing the cash at the moment either. But still, there's other (less expensive) things to be bought and bargains to be had if you look hard enough and this one was far too good an opportunity to pass up.
You might remember last year I bought five dealer catalogues spanning 2004-2011 (barring 2009/2010), and I paid £25 for each one. That seemed like a good deal considering the rarity of these things and the prices being asked for more recent editions. So when I came across a 2009/10 dealer catalogue on eBay with a price of just £8.50 I didn't need to think about it much!
Not only that, but the sale also promised an additional 'Monaco' book, though there was no further description or photographs to show exactly what that was. Could it possibly be the Monaco book that I got last year....? It seemed extremely unlikely but what other Monaco book was there? I had no idea, but I wanted it whatever it was... and if it did turn out to be the same one, I knew I would be able to dispose of it via the Calibre11 forum.
Sure enough, the package arrived and... it wasn't the same Monaco book, which was good - because I don't need another one and instead I got a nice little book about the Monaco V4. Truth be told I'd have been more than happy to pay £8.50 for the Monaco book alone - probably double that even, so this deal was pretty damned sweet if you ask me.
Like in some of the older S/EL and 2000 Series catalogues, TAG Heuer used some 'tissue paper' pages to add to the experience, in particular in the first of these three pictures you can see how they've used it to show detail in the movement. Very cool.
The only slight disappointment is a little bit of damage to the cover (something has dented the front near the spine as you can see in the top picture) and there was obviously a DVD included with the catalogue as there is a foam circle in the back cover. Still, I can't exactly complain can I?
I must admit I was surprised how much difference there was between the 2008/09-2009/10-2010/11 catalogues, not so much in the watches, although there were definitely comings and goings... but all the index pages were redesigned with ambassadors moving between ranges (Lewis Hamilton represents the Carrera in this one), which seems unnecessary given that this was just for the dealers to look at, but still, I guess if you've got a marketing department you might as well give them something to do.
The first thing I noticed though was that in the 2009/10 catalogue the Formula 1 WAH1110 was a baton dial, whereas in the 2010/11 edition it had changed to the oversized Arabics. I still don't know why they did that and kept the same part number, such an odd decision as it looks completely different.
As you can probably tell I'm super happy with my ridiculously small investment and how lucky is it that this was the only one I was missing from 2004-2011? I'm still smarting over losing that ring bound 1988 catalogue last year though....
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