Wow Shaun these watches are amazing !!

: As I was born in Africa, these Kenya Airforce Autavias have a
: special resonance for me, not least thanks to Jeff calling them
: "shauntavias".

: There was some discussion about the watches in earlier posts, and
: the weight of opinion was pretty much that they were likely
: Kenya Air Force issued watches. I was very keen to buy them once
: I saw them, and met the seller, and ended up being convinced.

: Of course nothing is certain - somehow I doubt the Kenyan Airforce
: was as meticulous and organised about military serials as the
: German Air Force was with it's bunds!

: The seller bought these from a guy who spent time in East Africa,
: and supposedly bought around 8 of them, five or so years ago. I
: met the seller (not the guy who bought them in Africa) and he
: seemed really convincing - he is a high end rolex dealer
: specialising in rare dialed variants; I don't really he see him
: messing around with Heuers - the price of the watches was a bit
: high for Heuers but peanuts in the rare rolex world. I actually
: realised I'd bought a superb monaco from him 3-4 years ago, so
: the guy has good credibility with me.

: The photos are really bad; as the crystals are so scratched it was
: really hard to get the lighting right for the cases. In reality
: the watches look great, unpolished cases but heavily worn, and
: the dials are beautifully faded, especially the 2 reg manual
: version which has a fantastic brown "tropical" dial.
: Everything about the watches just looks "right".
: Movements are fine, not new but not tampered with.

: They all have the KAF engraving on the back, which I examined with
: a 40x geologist's microscope. Under the micrscope you can see
: that the wear on the case back came after the engraving; so it's
: sure the engraving were not done recently.

: The most interesting of course is the Cal12 with the
: "shauntavia" style dial. We've never seen anything
: like it, and I have to admit when I first saw the photo from the
: seller I thought it was some sort of franken. But I have
: examined the dial very, very carefully with the 40x microscope
: and there is no doubt in my mind that it is an original dial.
: The subdials are interesting, as they have the same finish as in
: the 7740 shauntavias, it's sort of ivory rather than silver.
: Really cool dial. The main second hand looks like a replacement,
: that would be my only criticism.

: I'm pretty much convinced the Kenya Air Force story holds up. The
: cal12 version is really something new for all of us, and I'm
: convinced it was a prototype or produced in very small numbers,
: but it certainly it came out of Heuer.

: I'm a bit undecided how much to restore the watches, I think I will
: go for nothing at all, except for crystal replacement as it will
: be nice to see those incredible dials. I'll keep the original
: crystals safe just in case I want to get them back to completely
: unaltered condition.

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