The Complete History of the GMT-Master: From Pan Am Cockpits to the Most Iconic Two-Tone Bezel in Watch History

 In 1954, a group of Pan American World Airways pilots had a problem that no watch on the market could solve. Their transoceanic routes — New York to London, San Francisco to Tokyo, across time zones that didn't exist when most watches were designed — required them to track two times simultaneously. Local time at their destination. Home time at their base. The times of their crew's sleep cycles. The windows for communication with ground control in multiple cities.

The mechanical watches available in 1954 could do exactly one thing well: tell the time in one place. For pilots crossing multiple time zones in a single flight, this was a limitation that had real operational consequences.

Rolex solved it with a watch that went on to become one of the most recognized, most desired, and most imitated timepieces in the history of the industry. The GMT-Master. A watch with a fourth hand, a rotating 24-hour bezel, and a design logic so correct that it has remained essentially unchanged for seventy years.

This is the complete story of how that watch came to be — and how it traveled from a cockpit specification developed with an airline to the most coveted two-tone bezel in watch collecting history.

Part One: The Problem That Created the Watch

Pan American World Airways and the Transoceanic Age

To understand why the GMT-Master exists, you need to understand what commercial aviation looked like in the early 1950s — specifically, what it looked like from the cockpit of a Pan American World Airways flight crossing the Atlantic or the Pacific.

Pan Am was the prestige airline of the era — the carrier that defined intercontinental commercial aviation, that operated the most prestigious routes, and that employed pilots who were among the most technically skilled aviators in the world. These were not domestic routes with modest time zone crossings. These were journeys from one end of the world to the other, through half a dozen time zones, arriving at destinations whose local time bore no intuitive relationship to the time the crew had departed.

The problem of tracking multiple time zones simultaneously was not merely inconvenient for these pilots — it was operationally significant. Crew rest regulations were calculated in home time. Air traffic control communications were scheduled in Coordinated Universal Time (then called Greenwich Mean Time). Connecting flights and ground transportation at the destination were scheduled in local time. A pilot who lost track of any of these times was a pilot who created operational problems — and operational problems in commercial aviation have consequences.

The watches available in the early 1950s offered no solution to this problem. A conventional timepiece could be set to one time zone. It could be set and reset as the aircraft crossed each meridian — but this required attention, created opportunities for error, and produced a watch that showed local time only, with no reference to the home time or UTC that the pilot also needed.

What was needed was a watch that could show two times simultaneously — local time on the standard dial and a reference time zone on a separate indication — that could be read at a glance without calculation or manipulation.

The Collaboration That Produced the Watch

The solution came from a collaboration between Pan American World Airways and Rolex — specifically between Pan Am's technical staff and Rolex's chief engineer of the era. The brief was specific: a watch with a standard 12-hour dial for local time and a second 24-hour indication for the reference time zone, readable simultaneously, on a watch rugged enough for cockpit use.

The design solution was elegant in its simplicity. A standard Rolex Oyster case — already proven in aviation contexts through earlier Rolex models — with an added fourth hand that completed one full rotation every 24 hours rather than the standard 12. Against a rotating bezel marked with a 24-hour scale, this fourth hand could indicate any reference time zone the pilot chose to track.

The operational logic was as follows: set the standard hour and minute hands to local time. Set the 24-hour GMT hand to home time or UTC. Rotate the bezel so that the GMT hand aligns with the reference time's hour position on the 24-hour scale. From that point, the watch displays both local time (standard hands) and reference time (GMT hand against bezel) simultaneously, without any calculation required.

This sounds simple now, seventy years after the fact. In 1954, it was a genuinely novel solution to a problem that no watch manufacturer had yet addressed.

Part Two: The Reference 6542 — The Original (1954–1959)

Specifications and Design

The first GMT-Master — reference 6542 — debuted in 1954 and was supplied to Pan American World Airways pilots as part of their operational equipment. It was, from the beginning, a tool watch in the most literal sense: designed to solve a specific operational problem for a specific group of professional users.

The reference 6542 was housed in the standard Oyster case at 38mm — the same architecture that had proven itself in the Submariner and other Rolex sport references. The movement was the caliber A296, a 17-jewel automatic with the additional gearing required to drive the GMT hand at half the speed of the standard hour hand.

The defining feature of the 6542 was its bezel — a Bakelite (early plastic) bezel insert with alternating red and blue coloration across the 24-hour scale. Red for the day hours (roughly 6am to 6pm), blue for the night hours (roughly 6pm to 6am). The color coding served a practical purpose: at a glance, the pilot could determine whether the reference time zone was in daylight or darkness without having to calculate against the 24-hour scale mentally.

This original red and blue colorway — which would eventually become known among collectors as "Pepsi" for its resemblance to the beverage brand's color scheme — was not a stylistic choice. It was a functional design decision made in service of the watch's operational purpose.

The reference 6542 is now among the most sought-after vintage Rolex references. Examples in good condition sell for significant sums at major auction houses, and the Bakelite bezel — fragile, prone to cracking, and impossible to faithfully replicate — is one of the most immediately identifying features that separates an authentic early example from later references.

The Operational Legacy

For the first several years of its existence, the GMT-Master was primarily known in professional aviation circles rather than in the broader watch collecting world. Pan Am pilots wore it. Other airlines whose routes crossed multiple time zones adopted it. The military — which had its own significant interest in watches capable of tracking multiple time zones — noticed it.

This professional use heritage gave the GMT-Master something that purely decorative watches can never acquire: genuine operational credentials. The watch had been worn by people who needed it to work, in conditions where it needed to work, over routes where the consequences of failure mattered. This is the foundation of the GMT-Master's cultural authority — not marketing, not celebrity association, but the specific trust of professional users who chose it because it solved a problem nothing else could.

Part Three: The Reference 1675 — The Definitive GMT (1959–1980)

The Design Evolution

The reference 1675 — introduced in 1959 and produced for over two decades — is the GMT-Master that most people picture when they think of the reference in its classic form. The Bakelite bezel of the 6542 was replaced by an aluminum insert, more durable and more precisely manufactured. The crown guards — protective shoulders flanking the winding crown — were added to the case, giving the 1675 the more robustly protective profile that would define Rolex sport watches through the 1960s and 1970s.

The movement evolved through the 1675's production run — from the caliber 1565 to the caliber 1575, both offering the 26-jewel automatic movement with GMT function and the hacking seconds that allowed precise time synchronization.

The 1675 was produced in two primary bezel configurations throughout its run: the red and blue Pepsi and a red and black version that would eventually become known among collectors as the "Coke" colorway. Both served the same functional purpose — day and night differentiation — with different visual personalities.

The Crown Guards and the Aesthetic Evolution

The addition of crown guards to the 1675 case was not merely a cosmetic change. It represented Rolex's ongoing refinement of the sport watch case architecture — a recognition that the crown, as the most mechanically vulnerable point of any water-resistant watch, benefited from physical protection against impacts that might damage its water seal or the stem mechanism.

The crown guards give the 1675 a more purposeful, more tool-watch character than the unguarded 6542 case. They communicate protection and robustness in a way that flush cases don't — which is part of why the 1675's silhouette became so recognized and so imitated.

The Celebrity and Cultural Associations

The reference 1675 accumulated cultural associations across its twenty-year production run that gave it significance beyond its operational function. Clint Eastwood was photographed wearing one. Various motorsport figures and adventurers wore them. The watch's association with the Pan Am pilots who had originally used it gave it a connection to the prestige of intercontinental commercial aviation at its height.

These associations were not manufactured through marketing — they accumulated organically through the choices of genuine users who appreciated the watch for what it was. This authenticity is part of what makes the GMT-Master's cultural legacy so durable. The watch was worn by people who chose it for its function and capability, not people who were paid to be photographed with it.

Part Four: The Reference 16750 and 16760 — Transition Era (1980–1989)

The 16750 — Modernization

The reference 16750, introduced in 1980, brought the GMT-Master into the modern era of Rolex production. The sapphire crystal — introduced across Rolex's sport range during this period — replaced the mineral glass of earlier references, representing a significant improvement in scratch resistance that remains standard across the industry's quality tier.

The caliber 3075 movement — introduced in the 16750 — added quickset date function, allowing the date to be set independently of the time without cycling through 12 hours. A seemingly minor feature, it was one of the most practically useful innovations Rolex had made to any of its movements, and it became standard across the lineup.

The 16750 maintained the aluminum Pepsi bezel of the 1675 era while incorporating these mechanical and crystal improvements. It represents the bridge between the classic vintage GMT-Master and the more modern references that would follow.

The Reference 16760 — The "Fat Lady"

The reference 16760, introduced in 1983, was Rolex's attempt to solve a specific problem: how to produce a GMT-Master that could track three time zones simultaneously while still reading local time clearly.

The solution was the addition of an independently adjustable hour hand — one that could be set to a third time zone while the minute hand and GMT hand tracked the other two. This required additional movement architecture, which in turn required a taller case to accommodate it. The 16760's case is noticeably taller than any previous GMT-Master reference, earning it the collector nickname "Fat Lady."

The 16760 was produced for only a few years before being discontinued. It has since become one of the more collectible GMT-Master references precisely because of its unusual proportions and its short production run — a combination that makes genuine examples rare and documentation-dependent.

Part Five: The Reference 16710 — The Colorway Era (1989–2007)

The Most Recognizable Vintage-Modern GMT

The reference 16710 — produced from 1989 to 2007 — is the GMT-Master that most collectors of a certain generation think of first. It combined the caliber 3185 movement with the aluminum two-tone bezel in all three established colorways — Pepsi, Coke, and a new all-black variant — in a case that hit the proportion sweet spot of the era.

The 16710 was also the reference in which the GMT-Master began to accumulate the kind of collector attention that would eventually transform the reference into the cultural phenomenon it became. Its long production run created a substantial population of examples in varying conditions, making it accessible for collectors at multiple price points. Its mechanical quality was established and trusted. And its aesthetic — the two-tone bezel, the crown guards, the oyster bracelet — was mature enough to be distinctly GMT-Master without the patina concerns of earlier vintage references.

The Pepsi Colorway Becomes Iconic

The reference 16710 in Pepsi configuration is the watch that most clearly established the red and blue bezel as the GMT-Master's signature — the visual element that the reference is most immediately identified by, regardless of which specific reference number is on the caseback.

Part of this is simply the visual power of the combination. Red and blue against the steel case and silver dial creates a high-contrast, immediately distinctive watch that reads clearly from a distance. Part of it is the heritage — the association with the original Pan Am configuration that gave the GMT-Master its operational legitimacy. And part of it is the collecting community's particular appreciation for the Pepsi colorway as the most historically correct version of the design.

The consequence of this association — of the Pepsi bezel becoming the GMT-Master's iconic configuration — is that any watch referencing the GMT-Master design is evaluated first against the Pepsi standard. The blue and black Batman colorway, the root beer, the all-black — all of them are understood in relation to the Pepsi's established primacy.

Part Six: The Modern Era — Ceramic Bezels and Collector Obsession (2007–Present)

The Reference 116710 — Ceramic Changes Everything

In 2007, Rolex introduced the reference 116710 — the first GMT-Master with a ceramic bezel insert rather than the aluminum that had defined the reference since the replacement of the original Bakelite. This was not a cosmetic upgrade. It was a material revolution.

Ceramic — aluminum oxide processed and sintered to produce a material harder than steel, rated approximately 9 on the Mohs hardness scale — offered scratch resistance that aluminum simply could not match. The aluminum bezels of earlier GMT-Masters, when worn daily, developed scratches and color fading within years. The ceramic bezel of the 116710 maintained its color and surface finish indefinitely — the same bezel that looked sharp on purchase day looked sharp after years of daily active wear.

The first ceramic GMT-Master bezel was all-black — the reference 116710LN, where LN indicated "Lunette Noire" (black bezel). The all-black ceramic configuration created a watch with a new aesthetic personality — more stealthy, more contemporary, more suited to certain professional contexts than the high-contrast Pepsi or the warm black and red of the Coke.

The 116710 also introduced the caliber 3186 movement — an evolution of the 3185 with improved timekeeping performance and a Parachrom hairspring that provided increased resistance to magnetic fields and temperature variations. The Parachrom hairspring is made from a paramagnetic alloy that doesn't respond to magnetic fields the way conventional steel hairsprings do — a meaningful advantage for a watch worn by travelers who pass through airport security equipment regularly.

The Batman — The Most Discussed Bezel in Modern Watch Collecting

In 2013, Rolex introduced what would become the most talked-about GMT-Master bezel of the modern era: the reference 116710BLNR, with a ceramic bezel in black and blue. Collectors immediately dubbed it the "Batman" for its resemblance to the fictional vigilante's color scheme. The name stuck with a permanence that the marketing department could never have planned.

The Batman bezel configuration represented several things simultaneously. It was the technical achievement of producing a two-tone ceramic bezel — a manufacturing challenge that required new sintering techniques to fuse two different ceramic colors in a single insert without visible seams or color bleeding. It was the aesthetic achievement of creating a blue and black combination that read as contemporary and bold without the explicit vintage reference of the Pepsi's red and blue. And it was the cultural achievement of becoming the most immediately recognizable new watch reference of its year.

The Batman's production was more limited than earlier reference configurations — a consequence of the manufacturing complexity of the two-tone ceramic bezel — which created demand that consistently exceeded supply. This scarcity was not manufactured. It was the genuine result of a technically demanding production process applied to a reference that proved more popular than Rolex's production capacity could immediately accommodate.

The reference 116710BLNR's secondary market price appreciated significantly through the 2010s — not to the extremes of the Nautilus or certain Daytona configurations, but to meaningful premiums above retail that confirmed the Batman's status as a reference with genuine collector appeal beyond its initial novelty.

The Pepsi Returns in Ceramic — Reference 126710BLRO

In 2018, Rolex solved the technical problem that had kept the Pepsi colorway from the ceramic era: how to produce a two-tone ceramic bezel in red and blue. The reference 126710BLRO — a new reference number indicating the introduction of the caliber 3285 movement — brought the Pepsi back in ceramic with improvements to both material quality and movement performance.

The caliber 3285 represented a significant step forward — a new movement architecture with the Chronergy escapement (improved efficiency over the earlier lever and escape wheel design), increased power reserve of approximately 70 hours (compared to 48 hours for the 3186), and the Parachrom hairspring's magnetic resistance. The 3285 is widely regarded as one of the finest movements Rolex has produced for this category.

The 126710BLRO's significance extended beyond its mechanical improvements. By bringing the Pepsi back in ceramic — the material now established as the quality standard for GMT bezels — Rolex unified the reference's history. The Pepsi that began in Bakelite in 1954, moved through aluminum through the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, and was absent from the ceramic era had returned. The most historically significant GMT-Master colorway now carried the most technically advanced bezel material. The reference was complete in a way it hadn't been since 2007.

The Root Beer — Reference 126711CHNR

The Root Beer configuration — a warm two-tone bezel in brown and black, with an Everose gold case — occupies a specific collector niche that the steel Batman and Pepsi configurations don't address. The combination of precious metal warmth, the specific brown and black ceramic bezel, and the Jubilee bracelet creates a watch that reads as simultaneously sporty and luxurious — the sports-elegant category that the watch market has increasingly embraced.

The Root Beer's warmth — the combination of brown ceramic and Everose gold — is genuinely unusual in the GMT-Master family, which has historically been defined by the cool colors of the Pepsi and Batman configurations. It represents a deliberate expansion of the reference's palette toward the warm end of the spectrum — and it has been well received by collectors who appreciate both the GMT complication and the warmer material combination.

Part Seven: The Cultural Legacy — How the GMT-Master Became a Collector's Obsession

From Tool Watch to Trophy

The GMT-Master's transformation from a professional pilot's tool watch to one of the most desired references in watch collecting is one of the most interesting stories in the industry — precisely because it followed a path so different from the Nautilus and Royal Oak's routes to cultural significance.

The Nautilus became significant through the audacity of its pricing and the specific collector community's retrospective appreciation of its design quality. The Royal Oak became significant through its revolutionary challenge to the established hierarchy of watch materials.

The GMT-Master became significant through use — through the accumulated legitimacy of decades of professional wear by people who chose it because it solved a real problem. Pilots. Diplomats. Business travelers. The reference's association with genuine global movement — with the specific kind of life that requires tracking multiple time zones — gave it an aspirational quality that no purely aesthetic watch could claim.

By the time the collecting community began to focus seriously on the GMT-Master, it already had exactly the kind of authentic heritage that collecting values most. The watch hadn't been marketed as prestigious. It had been used as necessary. The prestige was a consequence of the function rather than a substitute for it.

The Bezel as Identity

The GMT-Master's two-tone bezel became its identity in a way that no other single component defines any other watch reference in the same way. The Datejust is identified by its date window. The Daytona by its chronograph registers. The Submariner by its rotating dive bezel. But these are functional features — the Datejust without a date is still a Datejust, the Daytona without subdials is still a chronograph.

The GMT-Master without its two-tone bezel is simply a three-hand watch with an extra hand. The bezel is what makes it a GMT-Master — not just visually, but functionally. The 24-hour scale on the bezel is the reference against which the GMT hand displays the second time zone. Remove the bezel's functional 24-hour scale and the fourth hand becomes meaningless.

This unity of form and function — a bezel that is both the watch's most distinctive visual element and its most essential functional component — is rare in watch design. It gives the GMT-Master a coherence that purely decorative elements don't provide, and it gives the bezel colorway selection a weight that goes beyond aesthetics.

Choosing a Pepsi GMT-Master is not simply choosing a blue and red bezel. It's choosing the original, historically authentic configuration — the one that Pan Am's pilots wore in 1954, that the reference was designed around, that represents the GMT-Master in its most historically complete form.

Choosing a Batman is choosing the contemporary, more stealthy configuration — the one that represents the reference's evolution into the ceramic era, that carries the manufacturing achievement of the two-tone ceramic bezel, that reads as modern and bold in a way the Pepsi's vintage associations don't.

The choice between colorways is a choice about what relationship you want with the watch's history — and that kind of choosing, about what you want to connect yourself to, is the heart of what watch collecting actually is.

The Waiting List Era

The GMT-Master's waitlist situation — particularly for the Pepsi and Batman configurations — mirrors the Nautilus's in broad outline but differs in specifics. GMT-Masters in desired configurations became increasingly difficult to purchase at retail through the 2010s, with authorized dealers maintaining waitlists that stretched months and in some cases years. Secondary market premiums for new-condition examples reached multiples of the retail price.

The demand was genuine — driven by a combination of the reference's established collecting reputation, the mechanical improvements of the 3286 caliber, the material quality of the ceramic bezel, and the cultural moment that brought new buyers into the watch market who treated the GMT-Master's accessible-seeming retail price as an entry point to the watch collecting world.

The consequence of this demand — and the resulting secondary market premiums — is that the GMT-Master became aspirationally positioned in a way that made quality alternatives increasingly interesting to serious buyers who wanted the GMT complication and design without the financial premium or the waitlist anxiety.

Part Eight: The GMT Collection at Watches By Cody — Eight Builds, One Movement, Every Colorway

Every GMT build in the Watches By Cody collection shares the same foundation: the Seiko NH34 automatic GMT movement, a 40mm 316L stainless steel case, sapphire crystal with anti-reflective treatment, tested waterproofing, and a 41-hour power reserve. The NH34 — introduced in 2022 as the first genuine GMT caliber in the NH movement family — features an independently adjustable fourth hand that tracks a second time zone against the 24-hour bezel. This is genuine GMT functionality, identical in operational logic to the Rolex GMT-Master's: set the standard hands to local time, set the GMT hand to the reference time zone, read both simultaneously.

What differs across the eight builds is entirely what this guide has been about: the bezel colorway, the bracelet style, and the case finish. Each combination draws from a specific chapter in the GMT-Master's seventy-year history — and each one communicates something different about the wearer's relationship to that history.

All eight are priced at $359 — a uniform price that reflects the shared quality foundation rather than creating a hierarchy where one colorway is presented as more premium than another. The choice between them is purely about which chapter of the GMT story you want on your wrist.

GMT Batman 

The Modern Classic

The Batman is where most people enter the GMT story in 2026 — the colorway that the collecting community named, debated, and desired from the moment it debuted on the 116710BLNR in 2013. Black and blue ceramic bezel. Steel case and oyster bracelet. Black dial with the GMT hand's orange tip the only warm accent in an otherwise cool, precise composition.

The Batman's appeal is its contemporaneity — it doesn't carry the vintage associations of the Pepsi, the warmth of the Root Beer, or the nostalgia of the Coke. It reads as modern, bold, and completely assured. The ceramic bezel's black and blue represents the GMT-Master at its most technically refined and visually confident. For anyone coming to the GMT for the first time, the Batman is the natural starting point.

Who it's for: First-time GMT buyers, anyone drawn to contemporary sports watch aesthetics, the definitive modern interpretation of the GMT-Master design.

GMT Pepsi 

The Original. The Most Historically Significant.

The Pepsi is where the GMT-Master began — the red and blue colorway that Pan Am's pilots wore in 1954, that defined the reference for its first five decades of production, and that returned in ceramic in 2018 to complete the reference's modern era. Blue for daylight hours. Red for the night hours. The most historically correct GMT-Master configuration possible.

At Watches By Cody, the Pepsi interprets this heritage with a blue rubber strap rather than the traditional metal bracelet — a choice that pushes the watch toward its sports roots, toward the kind of active, traveled life the GMT-Master was originally designed for. The blue strap coordinates with the blue portion of the bezel in a way that creates a cohesive color story across the full watch.

Choosing the Pepsi is choosing the watch's origin. It's the most direct connection to the 1954 Pan Am collaboration that created the GMT-Master, expressed in the colorway that has represented that connection for seventy years.

Who it's for: History-conscious collectors, anyone who appreciates the original configuration above all others, travelers who want the GMT story told in its most complete form.

GMT Bruce Wayne 

The Refined Interpretation

The Bruce Wayne is the GMT Batman in a different register — the same black and grey bezel direction but executed with a jubilee bracelet rather than the oyster, and a dial and case composition that reads as slightly more formal, slightly more considered than the standard Batman.

The name references the same fictional universe as the Batman colorway — the civilian identity behind the mask — and the aesthetic reflects that duality. More refined in bracelet choice. More versatile across contexts. The GMT for someone who wants the Batman's dark precision but in a package that transitions more naturally from a travel day to a dinner.

Who it's for: The person who loves the Batman colorway but wants a slightly more refined wearing experience. Business travelers who need GMT utility across contexts that range from airports to client dinners.

GMT Coke 

Heritage Warmth

The Coke — black and red bezel — is the GMT-Master configuration that existed alongside the Pepsi through the aluminum bezel era, offering the same day and night differentiation in a warmer, higher-contrast combination. Where the Pepsi reads as cool and precise, the Coke reads as warmer and more assertive — the red portion of the bezel catches light with an intensity that blue doesn't replicate.

The steel case and oyster bracelet keep the Coke in classic GMT-Master territory — the same proportions and finishing that the reference 16710 established as the standard. For anyone who has always found the Pepsi slightly cool and the Batman slightly stark, the Coke occupies the middle ground between them — warmer than either, more traditionally GMT in its color story.

Who it's for: Collectors who appreciate the GMT-Master's aluminum bezel era, anyone drawn to the warmth of red accents, the alternative to the Pepsi for those who prefer higher contrast.

GMT RG Root 

Full Rose Gold Confidence

The RG Root takes the Root Beer's warm direction and commits to it completely. Full rose gold case and jubilee bracelet — no steel to soften the warmth, no two-tone compromise. The black and warm-toned bezel against a fully rose gold case creates the GMT collection's most precious-metal statement.

This is the GMT for the wearer who is completely comfortable with warmth and luxury in a sports watch context — who wants the GMT complication's functional depth combined with the visual warmth of full rose gold finishing. No other build in the collection makes this particular statement as clearly.

Who it's for: The collector who has always wanted a precious-metal GMT, anyone who coordinates their watches with warm-toned jewelry, the GMT that prioritizes warmth above all other considerations.

GMT Ember 

The Rarest Combination

The GMT Ember is the most unusual build in the collection — a combination that doesn't map directly to any single historical GMT-Master reference but draws from the warm bezel tradition in a specific, distinctive way. The Ember's bezel combines warm tones in a configuration that reads as both historically informed and contemporary, paired with a two-tone rose gold and steel jubilee bracelet that bridges the gap between the Root Beer's warmth and the Coke's contrast.

It's the GMT for the collector who has studied the full range of bezel colorways and wants something that sits between the established classics — not Pepsi, not Batman, not Root Beer exactly, but something that borrows from all three in a synthesis that is distinctly its own.

Who it's for: The experienced collector who knows the GMT-Master's colorway history well enough to appreciate a synthesis of it, the wearer who wants something genuinely distinctive within the collection.

GMT Explorer II Black 

A Different Chapter Entirely

The Explorer II Black is the outlier in the collection — the build that draws not from the GMT-Master's colorway history but from an adjacent reference: the Rolex Explorer II, which shares the GMT-Master's fourth-hand complication but expresses it in a different silhouette and design language.

The Explorer II's design story is its own — a watch developed for speleologists and cave explorers who needed to distinguish AM from PM underground where no natural light reference was available. The fixed 24-hour bezel of the Explorer II (rather than the rotating 24-hour bezel of the GMT-Master) serves this specific purpose: a permanently set 24-hour reference that doesn't need to be rotated to track a second time zone, because the primary application is distinguishing day from night rather than reading a different time zone.

The black dial, orange GMT hand, and all-steel oyster bracelet create a watch that reads as more utilitarian and more rugged than the colorway-focused GMT-Master builds. The Explorer II Black is for the person who wants the GMT complication in its most stripped-back, most purposeful expression — no color story, no precious metal warmth, just function.

Who it's for: The purist who wants GMT functionality without the colorway conversation, anyone drawn to the Explorer II's specific heritage and silhouette, the most tool-watch-adjacent build in the GMT collection.

The Complete GMT Collection — All Eight Builds

Every build shares: NH34 GMT automatic, 40mm case, 12mm thickness, sapphire AR crystal, 316L stainless steel, tested waterproofing, 41-hour power reserve, 1-year warranty, worldwide express shipping.

The NH34's independent GMT hand works identically across every build — set it to your reference time zone, read local time on the standard hands, read reference time on the GMT hand against the 24-hour bezel. The same operational logic that Pan Am's pilots used in 1954. The same solution that remains correct seventy years later. Eight different expressions of one genuinely useful idea.

The Bottom Line

The GMT-Master is the most functionally justified watch reference in the history of the sport watch category. It exists because a specific group of professional users had a specific problem that no existing watch could solve. The solution — a fourth hand, a 24-hour bezel, and the design logic that made both readable simultaneously — was so correct that it has remained essentially unchanged for seventy years.

The colorways that define the reference — Pepsi, Batman, Root Beer, Coke — are the product of that functional logic expressed in material choices that have evolved as manufacturing technology has advanced. The Bakelite Pepsi of 1954. The aluminum Pepsi and Coke of the 1675 era. The ceramic Batman of 2013. The ceramic Pepsi of 2018. Each generation's material represents the best available specification for a bezel that serves a genuine functional purpose — day and night differentiation on a 24-hour scale.

The collecting community's obsession with the GMT-Master is, at its foundation, an obsession with a watch that earned its status rather than claiming it. A watch designed for a real purpose, used by real professionals, refined across seventy years of production, and now recognized as one of the most coherent and enduring tool watch designs in history.

The GMT collection at Watches By Cody exists in that lineage — eight builds, each connected to the same design logic, the same colorway heritage, and the same functional purpose. Wearing any of them is wearing a watch with a story worth telling — a story that started in a Pan Am cockpit in 1954 and continues every time someone checks a second time zone on a wrist that doesn't have to guess.

Choosing the right watch is ultimately about more than just specifications—it’s about finding a piece that fits seamlessly into your daily life. The best watches are the ones you don’t have to think twice about—reliable, versatile, and naturally aligned with your personal style.

At Watches By Cody, our goal is simple: to offer watches that combine timeless design, dependable performance, and real-world wearability—without the unnecessary markup often found in traditional luxury retail. We focus on pieces that look refined, feel right on the wrist, and hold up over time.

If you’re ready to find a watch that fits both your style and your lifestyle, explore our latest collection at Watches By Cody and discover the piece that works for you.