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Re: Carrera 2447S
In Response To: Carrera 2447S ()

Hi Julien.

As Paul says, there is a mismatch between the serial number of the eBay watch and its dial and handset. It's not possible for the case and the dial to have been together originally, so the watch is something of a marriage between (anachronistic) parts. The watch on the actual site has a different serial, more in line with what the serial of the eBay watch should be.

You're right about the dial colour varying over the Carrera's lifetime though. We show "white" in the table, but that is very much Jeff's preference rather than mine - I preferred "silver". Thing is, we're both right, but at different times :) English language Heuer brochures skirt around the issue by referring to the non-black dials as "standard" rather than coming down definitively on one side or the other. Given that it's N for "Noir", I don't think we should deduce S for "silver" because that should really be an A.

Let's take a quick tour through some Carreras to see the differences.

Very early Ss are a clearly metallic silver, with a fairly heavily radially brushed "starburst" finish:

The same was true of the watches with scales, though these later gained a more distinct separate "track" to display the scale:

As time progressed though, the brushing went away entirely and the dials became more of an enamel white/off-white finish:

Interestingly, however, when the "main" series of Carreras tended to be this more enamel finish, the Dato 45s came along and were strongly silver. S Dato 45s should always have silver, rather than whitish, dials:

Then, when the second execution dials with marker inserts come along, we're back to more silvery dials:

Note that the brushed finish is now evident again. If you look closely, you'll also see that the second layer of the dial "sandwich" is distinctly white, giving the effect of white registers on a silver dial:

Earlier watches had a same coloured second layer, so it was always silver on silver or off-white on off-white - these late watches could almost be called contrast registers, as the white is clearly different from the surrounding silver. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the second layer of these nominally silver watches is exactly the same as that which would be used in the NSTs etc:

It's near impossible to do a timetable of all the changes, or show them as separate executions in the table, but you can see this as a sort of continuum easily enough:

Silver > less silvery > off-white > more silvery

Hope that made it at least a little clearer!

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