Heuer Monaco 1533*** 1972 - Roy & Sacha Davidoff SA

Heuer Monaco 1533*** 1972

OUR ARCHIVE » Heuer Monaco 1533*** 1972

HEUER Vintage Iconic MONACO Ref. 1533G, Automatic Chronograph with Date, excellent condition, 1972
Serial # N/A
Circa: 1972

DESCRIPTION: Rare vintage Heuer iconic Monaco automatic chronograph with the rare Caliber 15 layout and its original bracelet, in excellent condition, from 1972

MOVEMENT: Heuer Caliber 15, Self-winding mechanical chronograph movement, 17 jewels

DIAL: Silver ‘grey’ Dial with Heuer logo, silver baton hour indexes, subsidiary seconds at 10 o’clock and denim blue 30-minute chronograph counter at 3 o’clock, date at 6 o’clock.
Red hours/minutes hands with luminous center and red central chronograph sweep seconds hand.
MONACO, AUTOMATIC CHRONOGRAPH and SWISS all originally printed on the dial.
Dial and hands are in excellent condition.

CASE: Large Square 43mm case, crown on the left side and two chronograph pushers on the right. Original Heuer logo and ‘Tool No 033’ engraved on the case back
Some visible marks and dent on the back of the case.

BRACELET: Original Heuer Stainless Steel link bracelet in excellent condition.

MANUFACTURER: Heuer-Leonidas S.A. Biel, Switzerland

NOTES: The Heuer MONACO was introduced in 1969 in honor of the Monaco Grand Prix race. The Monaco was revolutionary for being the first automatic chronograph with the Caliber 11 and the first square-cased as well. The Hollywood film star Steve McQueen used the watch to accessorize his character in the 1971 film Le Mans and the use of film stills has made the watch synonymous with McQueen. The Heuer Monaco was discontinued in the mid-1970s and redesigned in 1998 and finally relaunched in 2003 corresponding to McQueen’s heritage and lifestyle growing in popularity.
In the reference 1533G, the ‘G’ stands for grey although the dial looks silver is was references as such. This is one of the rarer versions of the MONACO with the Caliber 15 movement and has the seconds counter at 10 o’clock instead of the 12-hour register.
The 1960’s saw the race towards the development of the first automatic chronograph movement. Two groups were in contention for this feat: Movado/Zenith versus Heuer/Breitling/Hamilton/Dubois Depraz. The Caliber 11 was released just ahead of its competitor in March 1969 and became the first iconic automatic chronograph in the world.
The amalgamations that lead to its success therefore benefited from the same caliber fitted into Breitling, Heuer-Leonidas and Hamilton-Buren. This caliber became the base workhorse for the next 40 years to follow including its successor the Caliber 11-I and the Caliber 12.
In 1972, Heuer and Breitling modified the Caliber 12 movement so that it was offered as the Caliber 15 movement, a more affordable version of their automatic chronograph. The most apparent difference between the two movements is that the Caliber 12 movement has a 12-hour and a 30-minute chronograph register, whereas the Caliber 15 movement has only the 30-minute register and a running seconds counter a 10 o’clock.
There were also some technical modifications to the balance wheel, shock protection and regulation. Retail prices were able to be reduced by $5 to $20 (about 10%) depending on the models, which was a considerable amount at the time when the Carrera retailed for below $200.

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