Well,
Monrad is correct. The picture of the Tigers comes from the Concord publication
Panzer-Division 1935-1945. The caption in the book interprets the number to be “250287” and NOT “250787” (which I had originally thought too). That puts the production in June, which makes more sense because in October the headlight configuration was changed to the single center one. However, the new style tracks were not introduced until October… Hmmmm, well whatever the story may be behind this Tiger, it appears that it came from the factory with the zim applied; otherwise the crew would probably have painted over the hull number when putting a new coat of paint over the field applied zim.
Peridexion, sounds like you were looking entirely too hard to find something wrong with the picture. Believe it or not, I did not choose this picture to make any kind of a point. I just wanted to see what kind of a reaction it would get in a thread that seemed to have a lot of different interpretations going on, but it appears that most everyone has left the thread. I must admit though, the way you explained it, it did fit the previous situation quite well.
One more interesting thing about the picture. If you look closely, you can see that the Tigers on either side also have older turrets with zim applied. The one on the left is a command version with the turret track brackets and the old cupola, and the one on the right is an even older production turret with no track brackets. For a Tiger freak, its like finding a picture of Big Foot!!! Well, not quite, but close…