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Re: Vintage Heuer Valjoux 22
In Response To: Vintage Heuer Valjoux 22 ()

Hi Katalonian.

Being very specific about the early watches is pretty difficult. Sales literature is hard to find and the company is not well-documented in this period. Lots of manufacturers were producing largely similar watches and often the brands were not marked on the dial or movement. So we fumble around in the dark a bit, and there's plenty of guessing and suggestions rather than hard information.

So, with that caveated, let's look at what we can see here.

If confirmed as a Valjoux 22, that's a good thing, we know Heuer used those and we also know the date range during which the movement was produced (1914 to 1974 according to Ranfft). Moreover, we know the date at which Valjoux permanently switched to using two pushers rather than the one of your example, that being 1936.

Let's try and narrow that down a bit.

So we have a movement from some point between 1914 and 1936. Coincidentally, Heuer also produced its first mens' wristwatches in 1914 but they used pocket chronograph movements and had unmarked dials so we shouldn't look as early as that. In fact, dials weren't routinely marked Heuer until the '30s and even then not all of them were marked. We should look later rather than earlier then.

OTD has a brochure from 1938 but we know that's too late for the movement to have been supplied, although it could of course have been in stock and assembled later. Heuer were still using gold more often in this decade than they would do later, including rose gold as here. Now, I can't find a match for your case in that catalogue but there are a couple of similar cases, including:

That's a 13 ligne case and the Vj 22 is a 14 ligne movement, so we can't say that your watch is a 414 but it's a good sign that we have at least similar looking cases from Heuer in the late '30s.

The dial is in great condition for a watch that is somewhere around 80 years old so I guess we can't rule out it having been refinished. The "kilometres a l'heure" text is indicative of quite an early watch and not something I'm familiar with from many Heuers, but I have seen it on some that also had this triple scale tachymetre. This scale always seems to be in 3 colours but an example I found on the net had the centre, rather than the outside, scale in red.

Summing up, I'm afraid I can't give you model, reference or year of manufacture, just conjecture that it would be somewhere from the late '20s to mid-'30s. I'd lean more towards the latter given there is a Heuer shield on the dial.

Maybe someone else can add more.

Messages In This Thread

Vintage Heuer Valjoux 22
Re: Vintage Heuer Valjoux 22
Re: Vintage Heuer Valjoux 22
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