FYI, Crott did reply to my email today, acknowledging the information but nothing else.
While it seems that VC is ambivalent in their support for the vintage market on the whole, the few personal contacts I've had with people in the Heritage Dept have been very helpful. I'll always maintain that a healthy vintage community directly supports the brand's image, if not necessarily immediate sales. With their attention until recently so firmly on a few specialized markets, VC (or Richemont, for who knows how much of their overall strategy is mandated from above) was missing this "big picture". The results of the PuristS survey are already very interesting...and surprising for Vacheron!