'THE MYTHICAL ROLEX' GMT Master 1675 'Blueberry' - ULTRA RARE VINTAGE WATCH
Rolex GMT-Master 1675 Blueberry
I am genuinely excited like a kid at Christmas to be reviewing this watch.
Generally when reading up on or doing deep dives for a review, the first port of call is the manufacturer for specs, or if its a vintage piece, you head straight into the history books, so to speak.
The likes of Rolex, Blancpain, and Omega will not flinch when they tell you that their watch was worn on the Bathyscaphe and Sea-Lab, on the wrists of French combat swimmers, or indeed, on the moon. They’ll publicise designs, schematics, test results, and images of their watches on the wrists of those who were there.
So what, then, do you do when you have a watch in your hands that is utterly correct, and completely denied at the same time.
This is the story with the Rolex GMT “Blueberry”.
It is quite literally a mythical beast, but it’s here, and more to the point, it is very very real.
For watch nerds like myself, and I didn’t think I would ever have to invoke Wet Wet Wet when discussing horology but nonetheless, this watch is a Sweet Little Mystery.
So first, a little background.
In 1954 Pan American Airways, known as Pan Am, approached Rolex and asked them to design a watch which would display multiple timezones at a glance.
They planned to issue the watch to their pilots as they had started to operate trans Atlantic flights.
Research had shown that the ability to read home time and local time had positive effects on the reduction of jet lag. Something which was definitely useful when navigating approximately 670 tonnes of Boeing through the skies.
In response to this request, Rolex designed and built the GMT Master reference 6542.
This became official watch of Pan Am and had a red GMT hand, a 38mm case, plexiglass crystal, radium lumed hands and markers, a gilt print dial, and the most recognisable feature of the GMT – a blue and red moveable bezel with 24 hour markings.
It was a glorious but flawed reference as the early models had bakelite bezels which were prone to cracking due to being brittle.
This was by not the biggest problem though.
The Radium used to light up the bezel, hands and indices was found to be highly radioactive, which came as a surprise since it had been considered harmless to the extent that Radium infused toothpaste was on the market at the time which promised to give an extra radiance and glow to teeth.
As a result of this new information regarding toxicity, all 605 GMT Masters that had been imported to North America were recalled and tested by the Atomic Energy Commission.
Radium painted GMT’s were declared unsafe and were promptly re-issued by Rolex with Tritium providing the warm but no longer dangerous luminescence.
The early run of Bakelite/Radium GMT Masters are exceptionally rare and highly coveted by collectors, but with the change to aluminium and tritium we can clearly see Rolex “teeing up” the 6542’s successor, reference 1675.
The 1675 was introduced in 1959 and has a steel 40mm case with crown guards.
It was the first professional model to be made available with both Oyster and Jubilee bracelets and had a matte dial with Tritium markers.
Its aluminium bezel was swiftly nicknamed “Pepsi” due to sharing its colour scheme with the famous soft drink, a name which has endured to present day when describing blue and red Rolex GMT bezels.
By this time the GMT Master was not only being worn by Pan Am pilots, but had won over jet-setters and travellers across the board from business people to military personnel.
It was made famous by “Magnum P.I” when Tom Selleck wore his 1675 for the duration of the series.
It is also the reference worn by Che Guevara (allegedly a gift from Fidel Castro) and Marlon Brando who wore his minus its bezel on “Apocalypse Now”
Long story short, the 1675 is one of the “hot” models in the world of vintage Rolex, and that’s before we even get to the Blueberry, the unicorn variant.
The Blueberry is a 1675 with a genuine Rolex blue 24 hour bezel AND
That is quite literally all we know about it for sure, and this is why its so fascinating.
There are plenty of theories circulating about the Blueberry -
It was an “unofficial” Rolex production model - which makes sense as the brand has been known to create a few “specials”, but this has been denied by Rolex who replied to a Blueberry owner with the following -
“Sir, in response to your question concerning the colour of the bezel of your watch, we would like to inform you that to our knowledge, Rolex never produced a GMT reference 1675 with an all blue bezel.”
This is an interesting comment, as while it denies that “to modern knowledge” a blueberry 1675 was ever in production, it doesn’t dismiss the bezel insert as being “not from the hand of Rolex”, which leads to the second theory -
The blue insert was a service replacement given to customers who were unhappy that the red element on their 1675 Pepsi bezel was fading to a pink tone, which was (and still is on aluminium inserts) a regular occurrence.
We’ve all seen the “fuschia” and “raspberry” 1675’s command higher prices due to their faded bezels, but its very possible indeed that buyers in the era of the 1675 were not particularly taken by the pink hue that their Pepsi was beginning to display, so had the bezel switched out for all blue at service.
One rumour has it that these all-blue inserts came out of the New York service centre.
It may have been made in small numbers for the Middle East market. Some configurations of Rolex watches made for the Middle East have never seen the light of day in a brand catalogue.
Some have theorised that that the Blueberry was given to armed forces personnel, so its existence was all rather secretive and hush hush. Some Blueberries have been found with the UAE Air Force emblem on the dial which would lend weight to this idea.
It could be a special production piece for a specific group, in the same way that Rolex made a white gold Daytona with a matte black dial, red minute track, and bright orange chronograph hands for the Netherlands football team to commemorate their world cup efforts in 2010.
If you asked Rolex if they ever made such a thing - who knows what answer you would get, but the watch exists. 100 were made.
The final theory (or maybe it isn’t there are so many out there) is that the Blueberry originally started its life as a 1675 black bezel, but the insert has faded to blue over time.
This does happen with Submariners, but honestly I have never seen a black Submariner bezel fade to the very particular shade that the blueberry has become known for.
Navy yes, ghost grey, yes. Bright blue? No.
That said, different models, different bezels, potentially different suppliers, and therefore different paint.
If I had to pick one, I suspect that the service bezel theory to be the closest to the mark.
Eric Ku who is essentially the oracle of vintage Rolex has put the following on record -
“I know that circa early 2000, there was a find of these bezel inserts that were backdoored out of an official Rolex service center somewhere around the world. I know it because I was offered them at the time from the primary source. I do agree that they likely never existed on watches delivered from “the factory”, but their origin story does come thru Rolex at some point and to me were service parts of some sort.”
I don’t have the answers, and having pursued the mystery of the Blueberry for many years, I still don’t have the answer, but what I do have in hand, is an absolutely fantastic and very real Blueberry 1675 from 1976.
The 40mm case is lovely and thick with minimal signs of polishing. You can tell from the crown guards which are sharp, square and meaty and the top of the lugs which still have their original brushing on the upper surfaces.
The case sides are flat with minimal distortion with harsh polishing these sides begin to distort light and reflection, a bit like fairground mirrors.
No sign of softening, dishing, or distortion around the lug holes in the case, and you can see that the shoulderless bars are well recessed into the lug holes.
If I run my thumb along the rear of the case at the back, it’s nice and sharp.
One thing to really be aware of when assessing vintage cases is rounding or softening of edges. When four or five digit GMT’s/Subs etc Rolex left the factory the underside of their cases had a sharp, almost knife-like edge. This softens with polishing.
These are just a couple ways that you can check vintage pieces out to make sure that the case is as unmolested as possible, and as you can hopefully see, this 1675 has a superb full-fat case.
The dial is a lovely matte black Radial dial with eggshell tritium markers.
Radial dials are identifiable by smaller hour lume plots that are positioned slightly further away from the minute track than standard dials.
The tritium hands are a little lighter but this is par for the course as “way back when” Rolex dial and handsets were produced separately by the likes of Singer, Beyeler etc, and therefore used different batches of tritium paint.
Different batches = different compounds = different discolouration/fade rates.
The head is mounted on an Oyster 78360 bracelet with 580 end links and original clasp which is tight as a drum.
Although hollow link bracelets can suffer from “Stretch” - keeping them clean and wearing them properly fitted reduces this to the bare minimum and they will last for decades.
And so, to the bezel, which has an authentic all-blue insert which is fading really nicely, the fade here illustrates that this insert is a good couple of decades old, if not older.
If you look closely at it you can see a natural fading to the outer and inner edges of the bezel, and also around the 12-16 and 6-9 numerals, likely from being rotated fairly regularly.
Uneven fading like this on a bezel that has retained its top-coat shine indicates a natural fade rather than chemical ageing (aka bleach) which does fade bezels but also eats through the top-coat to leave a matte/satin finish that is is even all over.
Another method to false fading is to oven bake which gives varied results but is usually responsible for the chocolatey/purple brown hues on some artificial inserts, again the results from baking produce an even colour rather than fade.
All things considered, this is a superb example of a strange and elusive watch.
We don’t know the *real* story behind the Blueberry, and likely never will but we have enough pieced together history to work out that if it’s good enough for Ralph Lauren, it’s good enough for us!
If you have any intel on the Blueberry that we might have missed, please do let us know.