Being a bit of a luddite, somehow I have managed to turn off notifications for comments and I can't seem to turn them back on again... so I no longer get an email when someone leaves a comment. This is a bit of a pain really as I forget to check and so if people ask questions it means they don't get an answer as quickly as I'd like. If you have left a comment or a question recently, I can only apologise for the delay in responding, I will attempt to get the notifications turned back on to avoid this happening in the future.
Yesterday I was checking out the recent comments and one in particular caught my eye, it was posted on the 'History of the 6000 Series' and read as follows:
Anonymous26 December 2022 at 21:55
The 6000 1/10th Chronograph Professional 200 Meters, BF BD S.S. quartz CH 1113.BA0675-M0A couldn’t have been in the 2000 Catalogue as you show on this site, because my dad bought me this watch when I was 9 years old on Nov 4th 1997 for $1,647.47 cash, no tax.
Now, when I get a comment like this my first thought is always 'Dammit I messed up! Now I'm going to have to put it right.' And while this is annoying and time consuming I do appreciate when people point out what they believe to be errors or give me first hand information that I could never have found out, especially when it relates to obscure limited editions that have the same part number and appearance from the front as regular watches. Ultimately I want these 'History' posts to be as accurate as I can make them and if that means re-doing parts of them to make that happen then so be it.
However, this was different, this was easily checkable and so that's exactly what I did. I pulled up the 1997 catalogue and there was the CH1113 right enough, but only on a leather strap. So I pulled up the 1999 catalogue, same deal. It wasn't until the 2000 catalogue that the watch appeared shown on a bracelet, which is why the CH1113.BA0675 is shown as a 2000 watch in my post.
Now, you might argue that if it's shown on a bracelet in a blue and silver dial variation then obviously it will also be available in black. And I wouldn't argue with you. But, when I set out to create these History posts my goal was to make them as accurate as possible and not to assume things I couldn't back up. Of course I could have made my life so much easier if I'd ignored the variations and just listed the watch itself regardless of strap or bracelets. But I didn't.
The thing is, there are instances where watches are released on a strap or a bracelet, only for the alternative option to become available later. You only have to look at the current three handed 41mm Carreras, the blue, black and black/gold dials were released only on bracelets (in 2021) while the silver dial only came on a strap. In 2022 the blue and black/gold dials were given straps, but the black dial is still only available on a bracelet and the silver is still only available on a brown strap (even though the 39mm is available on a black strap and a bracelet).
So you see, you cannot simply assume that everything was available all at once and it's very difficult for me to know exactly what was going on 20-30 years ago.
So obviously, given the amount of work that goes into creating these posts, I was quite happy that I hadn't actually made a mistake, but it did make me realise that I needed to explain to people again how these 'History' posts are compiled and the fact that unfortunately because TAG Heuer didn't show every watch in every catalogue there will be grey areas like this.
It's a shame really because in the early 90s the catalogues were really thorough and even if they didn't show every variation visually they would put the part numbers next to the watch for both straps and bracelets. Unfortunately by the late 90s things were getting a bit lax, in fact in 1996 they printed a whole lot of wrong part numbers in the catalogues and then in 1997 they switched the numbers and the watches around which meant they got them wrong all over again.... unbelievable.
So with all that said, here's a link to the Main Menu for the 'History of TAG Heuer' posts:
