Released in 1954, the Rolex GMT-Master is the iconic result of Pan Am and Rolex's collaborative effort to design a watch that could tell the time in two different places at once. With the popularization of commercial flying, the distances flown were only getting greater, which meant pilots crossed time zones during flights more frequently, and hence a need for uniformity across the industry was created. As a result, the aviation industry began to use a standard time-zone to eliminate timing errors and the like. Greenwich Mean Time was decided upon as this standard, and as such, the GMT-Master's fourth hand, the 2nd hour hand, was to stay on Greenwich Mean Time - which is where the name for the watch comes from. Produced between 1954 and 1988, the GMT-Master is perhaps one of Rolex's most iconic models, and its first reference; one of the best known. Produced from 1954 until 1959, the ref. 6542 was a regular Rolex Turn-O-Graph with a modified movement, an additional hour hand, and its famous bi-colored Pepsi bezel. Unfortunately, this bezel, made from an early form of plastic, Bakelite, would famously crack and break due to its fragility. To solve this, Rolex swapped these Bakelite bezels in 1956 for anodized aluminum bezels like the one seen in our example here, which they kept until the introduction of Cerachrom in 2007.

A truly iconic timepiece that started a revolution within watchmaking and watch collecting, it is difficult to even imagine where Rolex or the modern watch market would be now if it weren't for the influence of the GMT-Master ref. 6542 and its subsequent models.