Cartier Tank WGTA0011

The WGTA0011 entered the catalogue in 2017 with a hand-wound manufacture calibre, the 8971 MC, in a pink-gold case on the footprint of the 1974 Jumbo. By January 2018 Hodinkee was reporting rose-gold bracelet versions in which, it wrote, the movement had changed to the hand-wound 1917 MC, and that is the calibre Cartier's own page now gives for the strap watch. When the strap model followed is not documented. No Cartier bulletin, serial range or dated example fixes the switch, and Mappin & Webb, an authorised retailer, still prints 8971 MC, so the evidence fits either a running change that retail data has not caught up with or examples of both calibres in circulation.

The second change is the size name, which followed the 2025 automatic described above. Across nine years the case has not changed by a tenth of a millimetre while its calibre number and its size name have each changed once, which is why an example is identified by its case, movement and papers rather than by what a listing calls it.

The WGTA0011 is framed by the two rose-gold Tank Louis Cartier watches that bracket it in Cartier's current catalogue, the small WGTA0010 below and the 2025 automatic WGTA0346 above, and by the steel Tank Must WSTA0041, which puts a quartz movement in exactly the same 33.7 × 25.5 mm footprint.

With one case and one dial on record, the risks in a WGTA0011 sit in the individual watch: which calibre is fitted, whether the dial and hands are original, and how much gold the case has lost to polishing. Current asking prices run around US$12,000 to 13,000 for used examples and US$15,000 to 16,000 for unworn ones, against the US$15,800 Cartier shows on its US site; those are asking figures, not realized sales. What the money buys is the Tank Louis Cartier, the watch Hodinkee calls the definitive dress watch, in its 1974 Jumbo footprint, in gold, wound by hand, and still in Cartier's catalogue nine years after its launch.