Photo Report The Beautiful People Of Introducing Birdwell And Undone Are Editors' Picks If You're Going To Give

Art Basel Miami And The Watches Making Waves With A Limited Edition A Friend A Watch, Give Them One Of
They Wore Surf Watch These

Reference Points Understanding The Rolex

GMT-Master
Unpacking the world's most famous travel watch.

JON BUES
197
MARCH 31, 2020

! " 15:00 / 15:00 # $

REFERENCE
POINTS
An original series examining
the history and evolution of
iconic watch lines.
SEE ALL

Reference Points Understanding The Rolex Reference Points Understanding The Rolex Reference Points Understanding The Rolex
GMT-Master Submariner Sea-Dweller

O
ADVERTISEMENT
ne of the crowning achievements of humankind in the last century was
the mastery of flight. When the Wright Brothers launched their Flyer
into the seaside breeze of Kitty Hawk, N.C., a door was opened onto possibilities
previously only imagined in myths or dreams. The first scheduled commercial
flight took place in Florida a little more than 100 years ago, from St. Petersburg
to neighboring Tampa. And the subsequent popularization of commercial air
travel in the 1950s and '60s allowed civilians to go places with greater speed than
any previous generation. But while the possibility to arrive on another continent
in mere hours was certainly game-changing, it created problems too, particularly
as it pertained to keeping and adjusting to time.

RICA

EDITORS’ PICKS

Editors' Picks The Bi!est Watch Surprises of

Douglas DC-8-32 N804PA of Pan American World Airways at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport in 1967 2021 (So Far)
(Credit: RuthAS/Wikimedia Commons).

There was no longer just the time. Rather, there was the time where one was and
the time where one was going. This was a daily concern for the commercial pilots
crisscrossing the world's time zones in the nascent commercial aviation
industry. One of the great American companies of the last century, Pan In-Depth I've Changed My Mind About The
Seiko SPB153
American World Airways, partnered with a Swiss watch brand by the name of
Rolex to see if it could make them a watch capable of telling the time in more
places than one. It is from this overture that came one of today's most collectible,
historically important, and iconic Rolex sport watches: The GMT-Master.

In House This Lucky Man Buys Thousands of

The GMT-Master didn't come from a blank slate. Watches For a Living

The Albino Dial GMT-Master We can trace its roots back to other classic Rolex
sport watches, perhaps starting with the Rolex
Ref. 6542
Zerographe reference 3346 circa 1937 with a
rotating bezel, but continuing to the Submariner
and Turn-O-Graph models that Rolex introduced
in 1953. These watches featured rotating aluminum
. bezels for timing elapsed minutes, and they served
as the platform upon which Rolex was to develop
ROLEY
the first GMT-Master. To this day, if you think of a
(STER-PERPETUAL

watch made for tracking time in more places than

18

GMT-MASTER
UFFICIAIIYCERTISIED
CHRONOMETER
one, there is a very good chance that the blue-and-
16

O
red bezeled Rolex GMT-Master, graduated for 24
•ZI
•
hours, is the image that appears in your mind's eye.
What started as a purpose-built tool for pilots has
transcended that role to become a totem of a
cosmopolitan, urbane, and well-traveled life. As
such, it's been worn not just by pilots and
The first GMT-Master was a large-for-its-
navigators, but by famous actors, entertainers,
time 38mm in diameter with a legible dial artists, thinkers, and musicians – the people whose
created for Pan Am Pilots. It is believed that
at least some of these supplied watches personalities and style influence us on a daily basis.
featured unusual white, or Albino, dials.
The name is appropriate in more ways than
one. Such examples of the 6542 are, truly, The watch collecting community continues to
white whales. In 2015, HODINKEE had this show great interest in the GMT-Master's vintage
very watch in the office, and Ben went
hands-on with it. references. And the current collection of GMT-
Master IIs accounts for several of the most sought-
after watches at retail. The Rolex GMT-Master is, in all its many forms, quite
simply the most famous travel watch the world has ever seen.
12

gl
le
E
DAT
XIT

≥
O'

Lho

The first and the most recent Pepsi-bezeled examples.

Wherever possible, I've provided production dates for the references in this
article. It is crucial to understand that what the numbers on the inside caseback
tell us regards the case production, but that watches were often not assembled
until a year later and then sold after that, sometimes many years later. In the
mid-'70s, Rolex ceased printing case production dates on the inside of casebacks.
For those watches, the serial numbers printed on the case between the lugs offer
the best insight into when a watch was made, but this too is something of an
imprecise science.

It's been 65 years since Rolex launched the first GMT-Master, and in that time,
there have been a great many variations if you take into account all of the gem-
set examples and different strap / bracelet configurations. Showing you every
single one of them would probably have been impossible, so instead we've decided
to focus on the watches that we think tell the story of the world's most famous
travel watch, from 1955 to the present.

In order to do this, we've once again tapped Eric Wind, former HODINKEE
contributor and the proprietor of Wind Vintage. Eric reached well into his
network of friends and collectors to bring us more than 30 world-class examples
of the Rolex GMT-Master to include in this article.

ADVERTISEMENT

Reference 6542: 1955 – 1959

22
•
20
LEX
22

0•
2

Reference 6542 (First GMT-Master, Small Lume Plots): 1955-59

02
2A

OLEX
ER-PERPI

GMT-MASTER
OFFICIALLYCERTIED
CHRONOMETER

LI
IIN

o
swIss
r
o

This is where it all starts. The reference 6542 is the first GMT-Master ever made,
a tool watch to aid in the work of commercial pilots. More than 60 years later, its
design is strikingly similar to that of the modern Pepsi-bezeled GMT-Master II.
As with so much that Rolex has done, one can see how the GMT-Master's design,
with its clever bisection of the day into daytime and nighttime and its 24-hour
hand, has influenced watchmakers through the years and helped to create a
category unto itself. Many will recall that this watch was famously worn by
Honor Blackman when she portrayed Pussy Galore in the James Bond film
Goldfinger.

While the Bakelite bezel of the 6542 has come to be known as the reference's
defining feature, it proved problematic for two reasons. First, it was prone to
cracking and was therefore replaced with a non-luminous metal insert toward the
end of the 6542's run. Second, the radioactivity of the bezels was the source of
controversy in the United States when, in 1961, an American Naval officer and
his family sued Rolex, claiming that his 6542's luminous bezel had caused cancer.

Rolex recalled these bezels and replaced them with anodized metal ones. Owing
to these factors, examples of the 6542 with original Bakelite bezels are
exceedingly rare.

Over the course of its five years in production, from 1955 through 1959, the 6542
used a 38mm Oyster case and three different automatic GMT-Master
movements. First, there was the cal. 1036, then the 1065, and finally the 1066.

The very earliest examples of the ref. 6542 feature the words "GMT-Master"
written in pink and are rare, with at least one example known to feature the
depth rating of "50m = 165ft" on the dial in red above the pink GMT-Master text.
Very early examples might also have a long-neck Mercedes hour hand similar to
the Submariner reference 6200, which was also from that period.

The steel 6542 cases had some variation over the years, with some having
narrower chamfered edges/bevels and some having very broad chamfered
edges/bevels. There were also variations in the placement of the red and blue on
the bezel. For steel 6542s, there are also some examples with fully lumed tips of
the GMT hands and others, like the ones featured in this story, that have lume
inside a small triangle.

Reference 6542 (Big Lume Plots): Case Dating To Q3 1958

2
•2
20

OLFX
ER-PERPETUAL

26
GMT-MASTR
OFFICIALLYCERTIF.D
CHRONOMETER
16

ZI

Here we have another beautifully preserved example of the first reference of the
GMT-Master. Like the previous 6542, it has a black gilt dial, but looking closely,
we see a change to the radium lume plots. This is a so-called "Big Lume" reference
6542 that is also sometimes called a "Maxi" dial 6542 (a term borrowed from the
late-1970s to early-1980s Submariner reference 5512 and 5513 matte dial watches).
With case production dating to the third quarter of 1958, we see that the
6542 dial design has evolved to these larger lume plots. The Bakelite bezel is still
there, of course, as is the OCC text and the chapter ring. This unusual dial
configuration quickly disappeared and Rolex reverted to dials with the smaller
lume plots after this unusual dial run.

In addition to being larger, the lume plots of this rare 6542 are closer to the
indexes of the chapter ring – almost touching. And the 12 o'clock marker is
almost touching the middle tine of the Rolex coronet.

Reference 6542 (18-Karat Yellow Gold, Burgundy-Brown Bakelite

Bezel, Alpha Hands): 1958-59

92
-20

Bi
PERP

GMT-MASTER
1
SUPERLATIVECHRONOM.TER
OFFICIALLYCERTIFIED
9
/°

40310

With the 6542, we see that gold examples have been part of the mix from the
early days of the GMT-Master, making it the first of Rolex's sport watches to be
made in gold (though there were certain pre-Daytona chronographs made in
gold). The literally high-flying world of international commercial aviation was
better suited to precious-metal tool watches than the SCUBA environment that
gave rise to the Rolex Submariner just a couple of years earlier, it seems.

As with the steel version, the gold 6542 had a 38mm case. The original gold 6542
bezels are likewise Bakelite, though rather than the bi-color blue and red, they
were burgundy-brown in hue. There were two dials that came with the gold 6542.
The version that we have here features the lighter champagne dial, but there is
also a version of the gold 6542 with a darker tawny dial that is more close in hue
to the burgundy-brown bezel insert.

This is also the first instance of what will become a recurring theme in gold
GMT-Masters, the nipple marker for the hours. The nipple-style marker will be a
hallmark of the gold GMT-Master for several years, right up to and including the
transitional ref. 16758. The example that we have here is on a pristine gold Oyster
bracelet. And the case came with a Twinlock crown, also in yellow gold,
identified by the line underneath the five-pointed Rolex coronet, making it an
"underline" crown.

Whereas the steel 6542 has a Mercedes hour hand and lollipop seconds, typical of
Rolex sport watches, the minutes and hours of the gold 6542 are alpha hands, and
the seconds are of a simple baton style with counterweight. Like the steel 6542,
the GMT hand features a small triangle. The movement used in this watch is the
cal. 1065.

Reference 6542 (Bezel Conversion): 1959

It would be easy to mistake this 6542 with a converted bezel for an early
reference 1675. By the time of the aforementioned 1961 lawsuit, Rolex had already
recalled the Bakelite bezel. The watch that we have here, with its nicely
tropicalized dial, was born with Bakelite, but that bezel was ultimately replaced
with the metal insert we see here as a result of a recall. Other times, Rolex service
centers were known to have scraped the radium out of the bezel inserts and
replaced it with tritium or left it empty of luminous material.

1n early 1960, Rolex issued a statement through its authorized dealers in the
United States to address confusion caused by its recall of Bakelite bezels. From
this document, we can learn a few things. For one, we can tell that as of the time
this document was issued, just 605 GMT-Masters with Bakelite bezels had been
imported to the United States – a tiny amount. The document also asserts that
the GMT-Master at the time was "a special-purpose wrist chronometer used
mostly by navigators and pilots for telling time accurately in two timezones
simultaneously." My, how the GMT has grown beyond its initial scope, and also
grown in price. At the time of the statement, a stainless-steel ref. 6542 would
have cost a pilot $240, and a gold model would set him back $600.

ADVERTISEMENT