BUYING EXPERIENCE: TAG Heuer 2000 Searacer Velcro Strap

 

Years ago I managed to get hold of a leaflet for the 2000 Searacer, which showed that the watch could be purchased either on a bracelet or on a black sailcloth strap, but also that there was a red velcro strap available which came in a pouch with a strap changing tool. I remember a long time ago I enquired about the black sailcloth strap and being told that it had been discontinued. I don't think I ever asked about the red velcro strap as I thought that there was zero chance of that still being available...

But then a few weeks ago a new forum member at TH Forums contacted me and told me that she had ordered a 2000 Searacer from Japan and that she had already got hold of the red velcro strap for it directly from TAG Heuer. Interesting!

BUYING EXPERIENCE: Wrist Envy Sailcloth Strap

 

You probably haven't noticed (because why would you), but I am not a fan of aftermarket straps. I know a lot of people are, they see a new release and they can't wait to buy it and switch it out onto ten different straps... (all of which look absolutely terrible to me - especially those suede looking things with the sideways stitches near the lugs, 🤮), but that ain't me. 

No, I tend to think the manufacturers know best and even on the rare occasions when they don't I still think it's best to stick with other straps from the same product/model range, hence I bought the black rubber strap for my Aquaracer WAY208C from TAG Heuer and of course it fits and fills the lugs perfectly.

So with all that said, why on Earth am I talking to you about an aftermarket strap I bought from 'Wrist Envy'? Well, it's a long story... and that story tarts way back in 2019, when I spied this CV2A80 Carrera Calibre 16 in TAG Heuer's Bicester Outlet store.

BUYING EXPERIENCE: TAG Heuer Kirium Chronometer

Well I guess this had an air of inevitability about it didn't it? Delighted as I was with my last purchase (my Aquaracer Regatta Calibre S, way back in... January) it clearly also reignited a desire in me to finally pick up that WL511A Kirium chronometer I've wanted for I don't know how long. But of course, I couldn't find one and the ones I did find with 'SOLD' on them seemed to go for more than I really wanted to pay... considering, you know, I already have three Kiriums. So, deeply disappointed, I saved my eBay search and waited for the email. 

Well I didn't have to wait long, just a week or two passed and then there it was, looking mighty fine and starting cheap at £199, which would have been awesome, but highly unlikely. So I debated... should I place a bid at £199 to stop anyone using the £400 'BUY IT NOW' feature, or should I just buy it now myself?

BUYING EXPERIENCE: TAG Heuer Aquaracer Calibre S Regatta Chronograph

 

While it's a noble endeavour of mine to try to turn my rather large collection of (mostly) cheaper TAG Heuers into a smaller collection of 'less cheaper' TAG Heuers, it does rather take the fun out of the experience. Sure I was a little slow to cotton on to the fact that watches are not inanimate objects and they are liable to break and need repairing, but sometimes I really miss those heady days of 2019-2022 when every other month brought at least one new Ebay bargain to my door. Sigh...

Now, having sold approximately half of my collection, I have used most of that money to buy some nicer watches like my Grand Carrera Caliper Calibre 36, my Grand Carrera Chronograph Calibre 17, my SLR Calibre S and my Aquaracer Solargraph and I don't regret doing that, however I still get the urge to buy 'something cheaper' now and again. Truthfully, spending big money* on watches is still not something I am really comfortable doing, and since I only really like one watch brand most of the things I end up looking at are usually variations of things I already own or things that are still a bit out of my comfort-zone price-wise, even when pre-owned.

*My idea of 'big money' being anything over £2000 honestly...

BUYING EXERIENCE: TAG Heuer FT6051 White Rubber Strap

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TAG Heuer Boutique / 28th September 2024, Meadowhall, Sheffield

Some of you will probably remember that the original 45mm Carrera Heuer 01 Skeleton (CAR2A1Z) was at first available in just one format: red dial highlights and a black rubber strap. This was later expanded to include a white rubber strap and indeed a red rubber strap. There was also a 'Blue Touch' edition which featured blue dial highlights and a blue rubber strap, that was pretty nice too... but by the time that arrived I'd already bought mine and I don't have any regrets about that.

It's perhaps a little surprising that TAG Heuer didn't play around more with this, as we saw some future possibilities at the launch event (yellow, orange and lime green models were on show but none of them made it into production - booo!). But still, if you own a CAR2A1Z you can of course order a white or red (or blue I guess) strap for it, and that's exactly what I decided to do after 8 years of ownership!

BUYING EXPERIENCE: TAG Heuer Grand Carrera Calibre 36 Caliper Chronograph

 

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A few weeks ago I asked my good friend Jim Dollares how I should celebrate hitting one million views on my blog? I was thinking a special post, or a new header that would replace the 'Aquaracer@20' one for a week or so, but instead Jim said 'you should buy a new watch'. Great idea! Of course I didn't just go out and buy a watch just for the sake of it, I was already sort of, kinda, in the process of looking into a second go at the CAV5115... I mean sure, the timing was nice, but I wasn't going to spend this kind of money on a whim. 

And when I say a second go... please don't misunderstand, I've never owned a CAV5115 before but some of you may remember that I visited Watchfinder's 'Avery Row' branch last September to view one that was on a bracelet. Of course that was before the watch market softened and so even with a damaged dial and the red paint missing off the second crown it was being sold at £3750 (and when I asked to negotiate they said that was cheap because of the condition), things are different now...

BUYING EXPERIENCE: TAG Heuer Aquaracer 'Orange Dial' Quartz Watch

 

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Well there I was minding my own business, wondering if Watches & Wonders was going to bring any surprises or indeed if I would actually buy any watches in 2024... when eBay sent me an email telling me to check out 127 new TAG Heuers on their website. Now this is hardly an uncommon event and I don't know what made me click on it this time, but half way down the page I spied something I hadn't been actively looking to buy, but which had always been at the back of my mind ever since I first saw it six or seven years ago. At the same time it was something I really wasn't prepared to pay top dollar for, simply because I already had the exact same watch but with a light grey dial (and let's not forget the 2021 orange dial Formula 1).

The auction had a couple of days to go and the watch was ridiculously low, like £250 or something. So I placed a cheeky bid of £290 and was outbid straight away. Okay, time to sit back and see how it plays out. I mean clearly this watch wasn't going to sell for £300 or anything close, but no sense in driving the price up too early.

BUYING EXPERIENCE: TAG Heuer Aquaracer 'Two-Tone' Calibre 5 Watch by Jim Dollares

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Today we are joined by Sweden's number one Aquaracer enthusiast - Jim Dollares; a man who now counts two Aquaracers in his allegedly 'three-piece' watch collection... alongside his 160th Anniversary Carrera, his original Formula 1 Red Bull quartz, his Breitling Colt and several other less exotic pieces. But never mind all that, today Jim's here to tell you about his latest (and greatest?) purchase, the long anticipated WBD2120.

JIM: I've always had a soft spot for yellow gold two-tone watches with a blue dial and my first proper watch love was the TAG Heuer Aquaracer. It is no wonder why the WBD2120 turned into an obsession of mine after its release in 2020. For various reasons, mainly money, it took approximately four years for it to finally find a home in my three piece watch collection.

"It looks so douchebaggy. In a good way!"

Yes, this was what I told the sales person in London last year, when I was able to try it on. Afterwards I regretted deeply that I hadn't purchased it then and there but budget wise I had not calculated to spend that amount at that point. Plus, a couple of months prior I had just bought another Aquaracer, the Ice Diver (WBP201C).

BUYING EXPERIENCE: TAG Heuer Aquaracer Quartz Ladies Watch

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Way back in 2021 my wife and I visited the TAG Heuer outlet at Bicester Village and she tried on a WAY1355 Aquaracer. She absolutely loved it, but she had some reservations about the highly polished rose gold bezel and how resilient it might be. In addition, at that time the watch was on sale for about £2100, which was probably reduced from about a list price of about £3000/3200 - undoubtedly a very decent discount, but still a lot of money to spend on a diamondless quartz piece unless you're absolutely besotted. 

Fast forward three years and watch prices have gone crazy (although for how much longer I wonder?), TAG Heuer's website now shows this watch at £4350, though it is out of stock and, I presume, discontinued. However, the price of the watch at Bicester Village has actually dropped significantly to a frankly incredible £1300, which means it's basically being sold at 70% off the current website price. Some deals are truly too good to miss out on, and once I noticed this and I sent it to my wife to look at we quickly arranged a Saturday morning trip to the Bicester store.

BUYING EXPERIENCE: Cartier Pasha Quartz Watch

 

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While my wife Rose does have a pretty healthy selection of TAG Heuer watches that she's collected over the years, she hasn't been quite as loyal to the brand as I have. Over the years she's picked up a skeleton-dial Oris Atelier and an Omega Constellation quartz (both of which are right up there amongst her favourites) and now she's expanded this betrayal to include her very first Cartier. 

For a while she had been looking at a number of blue mother of pearl dial 'Links' on Watchfinder but couldn't quite decide if they would ever look as good in real life as they did in the pictures (my guess is not). Prior to that she had been looking at some nice looking Dior watches on the same site, but gave up on them when she realised how small they were...  and then she started looking at Cartier. I must admit I was quite surprised at this because she's never been one for Art Deco and she hates Roman numerals on watch dials (which most Cartiers of course have). 

BUYING EXPERIENCE: TAG Heuer Aquaracer 'Solargraph' Solar Quartz Watch

 

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When the original Solargraph came out I was more than a little intrigued. A cool black Aquaracer with a lume infused carbon bezel - count me in! But God-damn it took a long time to come to market, and by the time it did there was suddenly a rather nice titanium version on offer too. Unfortunately, right at the point when the watch finally broke cover was right when I was saving hard to buy myself something 'special', and so I was reluctant to part with the necessary £2500 to buy it because I knew it was going to take a long time to replace that in my TAG fund.

But still I sat in the TAG Heuer boutique in Sheffield for what must have been nearly half an hour, pondering and debating. I liked it, but... it seemed a little small, and a little expensive and I wasn't 100% sold on that light blue hand. Of course since then I have bought the green dial Calibre 5 Aquaracer which is also 40mm (all my other Aquaracers are 43mm) so I came back to the watch better prepared from that perspective, and as for the blue hand well I think I like it now... it's kinda cool that it marks out this Aquaracer as a solar-powered model and I also like that this is the original 'Solargraph' and always will be.

BUYING EXPERIENCE: TAG Heuer Aquaracer Ladies Quartz Watch

 

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I never thought I'd see the day when my wife would own a two-tone watch. Every time I bought one she said nice things but I could tell she didn't feel the same way about them that I did. Then maybe a year or two ago she started to soften a little bit, started dropping things into conversation like '...well, I don't have any gold watches...', things like that. And so the long, slow slide towards 'ownership' began. I'm sure you know how it goes.

Then a couple of weeks ago I caught her looking at two-tone watches again, this time on Est 1897 (now H&T). Now one of the great things about ladies watches is that they are much less likely to be fakes, and even less so in two tone, but still of course you should be careful. The watches she was looking at on Est 1897 however I had no concerns about as they were 8-10 years old and mostly rather dreary looking.

BUYING EXPERIENCE: TAG Heuer Aquaracer 'Green Dial' Calibre 5 Watch

 

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It's been about a month since I finally got my hands on my green dial Aquaracer Professional 200, and what with everything else that's been going on recently (including our Swedish correspondent Jim Dollares finally visiting olde London town) it just kind of slipped my mind to write my 'Buying Experience' post. Seems a long time since I wrote one actually, which is a marked change from the last couple of years where I seemed to be writing them every few weeks!

But that all changed once I bought my blue dial Japanese limited edition Grand Carrera Calibre 6 and I finally realised that I didn't need 'more' watches, I needed 'better' watches, and so the cull began. But more on that anon, today we're here to talk about the WBP2115.

Buying Experience: TAG Heuer Aquaracer WBP201C by Jim Dollares

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Today we welcome back our Swedish correspondent Jim Dollares who is back to tell you all about the time he went to a shop to buy an Aquaracer, and this time he actually did buy an Aquaracer... eventually.

JIM DOLLARES: In 2021 I wrote a story for the TAG Heuer Enthusiast blog about my pocket full of money and me being on my way to an authorised dealer to buy my very first Aquaracer. On that day I ended up ordering the Tudor Black Bay 58, but let me tell you, the Aquaracer line of watches never left my thoughts or my heart.

A New Aquaracer Design

It is funny when I think back on my emotional journey with the Aquaracer watches. I remember the WAY211B being one of my first true watch loves and obsessions. I spent hours and hours staring at photos of that watch. In 2021 when Frederic presented the updated Aquaracer design I was outraged. How could they ruin the unique and perfect design of the Aquaracer? What is this nonsense with the weirdly shaped indices and the round cyclops? 

Fast forward one year and I had warmed up to the new design and I could sense that familiar tingle in the balls that we all get from a perfect watch. Eventually I tried on the new ones and found myself wanting to go back multiple times just to experience the WBP series of Aquaracer on wrist. But, what initially sold me on the new generation was not the design, it was how it felt in the hand and on wrist. This new generation is what the Aquaracer should have always been; well built, nicely finished and luxurious in hand.

BUYING EXPERIENCE: TAG Heuer SLR for Mercedes Benz Calibre S Lap Timer Chronograph

 

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I don't know how many times I have seen a CAG7010 at TAG Heuer's Bicester Village store, but up to about 2019 it seemed like something of a constant fixture during my regular visits. I must have tried it on a few times too, and even a year or so ago (the last time I saw an SLR in store) it was the white dial version of this same watch, actually now I come to think of it I don't think I've ever seen an automatic version of the SLR for sale there, only ever the Calibre S version. 

Of course, being something of a contrarian I've long admired the watch, seduced by it's obnoxiously brutalist bracelet and complex quartz movement, but never quite enough to pull the trigger; especially since even at outlet discounted prices these watches were still pretty pricey (£2500-2800... IIRC).

BUYING EXPERIENCE: TAG Heuer Grand Carrera Calibre 17 Chronograph

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Well, this has been a long time coming. My first hands-on experience with the CAV511A came way back in 2017 when I tried on a pre-owned piece in the Michael Jones store in Northampton. At the time the watch was priced at £2700 and while I gave it considerable thought, I eventually made the absolute school-boy error of buying a cheaper (GMT) version which I ended up only keeping for a year and then traded in against a couple of quartz pieces (one of which I only kept for a year!). It was a bad decision which kept on going wrong and this ultimately (and unfortunately) put me off Grand Carrera ownership for some considerable time...

 

BUYING EXPERIENCE: TAG Heuer 2000 'Sports' Quartz Watch

 

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This is a watch that has been on my wants list for an extremely long time, but for one reason and another I didn't pick one up until now... or actually March this year. I'm not entirely sure why it's taken me this long to write about buying this one, but... ever since I discovered TAG Heuer's 2000 Sports range I have been intrigued by the difference an aluminium bezel and some unusual Arabic numerals could make to a watch. 

If you're not aware, the 2000 Sports came in four flavours: all blue, red/black, black/gold and white/black. It was also available in three different sizes; men's, midsize and ladies. I'm not too sure what sizes the midsize and ladies are but this one is your bog standard 37mm. I would imagine the midsize would be about 34mm and the ladies probably 28mm or something close to that.

BUYING EXPERIENCE: TAG Heuer Grand Carrera Calibre 6 'Japanese' Limited Edition

 

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Ask any watch enthusiast to name a model from TAG Heuer and you can be sure the name 'Carrera' will be near the top of the list, but 'Grand Carrera'? Not so much. You see, the Grand Carrera (decried a few years ago as a 'stupid idea' by the otherwise splendid Jean Claude Biver - before he announced the model was coming back... only for the idea to be cancelled when Zenith got the super-duper silicon movement that was planned for it!) was a short lived chronometer-certified uber-Carrera that never really took off and which was quietly retired after about five years in the line up.

Undoubtedly one of the reasons for this was the fact that many people did not (and indeed still do not) like the look of the watch, and in particular the unusual (avant garde, perhaps) shapes utilised as sub-dial windows. Indeed, while I've always liked the chronograph version I will admit that the dual subdials somehow conspire to create the illusion that the watch has an oval dial, which is a little off-putting to say the least!

Why then are we talking about a 'Buying Experience' today? Well, that's a very good question, and longer term readers may remember that this is not my first time at the Grand Carrera Rodeo. Oh yes, me and the Grand Carrera have 'history'. Expensive history!

BUYING EXPERIENCE: TAG Heuer Golf Quartz Watch

 

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Ever since I got into the whole TAG Heuer thing I've always been fascinated by the more off-beat models, and one such example would be the TAG Heuer 'Golf' which appeared in the mid 2000s and exploited TAG Heuer's collaboration with the legendary golfer Tiger Woods. The watch was designed with the express purpose of being suitable for wearing while playing golf, which meant that comfort and lightness was imperative. To this end TAG Heuer moved the watch's crown to the left hand side (so as not to press into the back of the hand while taking a shot) and a created a unique design which completely eradicated the need for a clasp. 

BUYING EXPERIENCE: TAG Heuer Kirium Toolkit

While the more sensible side of my brain knows that I need to stop purchasing things just because they have a TAG Heuer badge on them, unfortunately my less sensible 'collector' side still can't help itself when it sees a shiny object... so when this cool TAG Heuer Kirium toolkit came up on eBay a few weeks ago I knew I would end up buying it as long as it didn't attract silly sums of money.