Page Dimensions

Approx. 7 1/2" x 11 3/8" (19cm x 28cm)

Story and Details

Let's start with a fun fact: This is the very-first Rolex advertisement to feature the Concorde and GMT Master together. Yup, that's right. Published in the winter of 1968, the imagery shows the French Prototype 001 during a ceremony in Toulouse that actually took place a year earlier, in December 1967. In March 1969, this magnificent aircraft took to the sky for the first time, piloted by André Turcat. Besides it being the first of its kind, it's also special because it's in full-color. Only a small percentage of the "If you were..." series were printed in color. The color aspect can be extra-appreciated because of the 18kt. gold GMT featured, which makes the ad even more vibrant. That gold and brown combo is so good... You can almost feel that silky jubilee bracelet on your wrist... Of course what we fall in love with today, wasn't necessarily what caught people's eye back then. Some fifty years ago, when this ad was freshly printed, no one was splitting hairs when it came to Rolex watches. However at a certain point, collectors and dealers started to look for subtleties to differentiate certain models. While nicknames for watches typically come from the iconic figures who wore them, this exact configuration of the GMT Master Ref. 1675, in solid yellow gold with unique stick-shaped hour and minute hands, owes its distinction to this advertisement. That's why this variant is known as the “Concorde” GMT. A nuance, to be sure, but it’s these small details that differentiate Rolex watches (and the reason collectors go crazy for something). In conclusion, I'll leave you with one more fun fact: The ad mentions Pan Am will be the first U.S. airline to fly the Concorde. Of course, this never happened. Only Air France and British Airways flew the Concorde.