253.006*
This was supposed to be a straightforward little post about this 1980s 2000 Series that I spied on eBay the other day; but it wasn't until I went looking for a 'head-on/white background' shot of a 253.006 to head up the page that it struck me that something was seriously amiss. I'm sure some of you might be gawping at the picture above and in particular the pozi-screw heads on the bezel and thinking, 'seriously Rob, something is amiss and it's blatantly obvious'... but actually (unbelievably) the screw heads are entirely correct...
This piece is currently on offer at the (highly optimistic in my opinion) price of £950. Which seems about £300 too high, even it was all above board, but there's a problem and that is the part number. The backplate claims the watch is a 253.006, which seems plausible enough - it's the kind of number I would expect for a 1980's 2000 Series watch, the problem is when you look up that number you find that a 253.006 should be black, with a black bracelet. Like this one...
So, okay I thought, let's find out what this actually is then, because on the face of it it looks extremely plausible and maybe, just maybe it has the wrong backplate affixed. So I started with the 1980s TAG Heuer catalogues and came up with nothing. Okay, so maybe this was a late-era Heuer watch that was re branded but never appeared in a post 1985 catalogue? Again I went back through the 1980s Heuer catalogues too, and again I found not a sausage...
Hmm, this is very odd. So the conclusion I have come to is that this watch may have been made out of parts of different watches. I think the dial and the gold crown have come from the 253.006, but then this has been matched to a steel case and bezel with steel pushers and put on a two tone bracelet from some other 2000 Series (the bracelets on old TAG Heuer watches were a lot more interchangeable than they are these days!).
Of course I could be wrong, but the fact that I can't find a watch that looks exactly like this in any catalogue (bearing in mind that the catalogues of the 1980s were a lot more comprehensive than they are today and they really didn't have the same penchant for non-catalogue special editions back then) and the fact that it is wearing another watch's back plate is a massive red flag for this one... and I can't help but think if this had been a genuine two tone model the bezel and/or screws would have been gold plated too.
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