I think that for someone deciding which new releases to present this year was a lot of fun. Knowing this, it would have been immediate to realize that the new replica rolex GMT-Master II Ref. 126720VTNR, as a novelty for 2022, would have left everyone speechless. I imagine the board, a small number of white-collar workers who decide everything in the Geneva foundation, smiling around a table thinking of the face that the whole world would have made on March 30th.
As if to make a mockery of all those who for years have been committed to drawing up more or less diligent and reasoned forecasts, giving life to the unimaginable in 2022, the brand with the crown made it under everyone’s nose.
Rolex unveiled a new GMT-Master II with a crown and date window on the left and a ceramic bezel in a never-before-seen color combination.
New Rolex GMT-Master II Ref. 126720VTNR
In recent years, the GMT-Master has turned out to be mum’s favorite cuddly. We have seen it in all sauces. For heaven’s sake, nothing beyond a change of bracelet and an updated movement (after six years the Batman has apparently materialized identical with just those two unique innovations). For the model with a Cerachrom Pepsi bezel, roughly the color of the first GMT-Master, we had to wait 13 years, but that’s the way it is in Geneva. The beauty is that everything is studied and down to the smallest detail.
In addition to the name, aesthetically, the new GMT-Master II 2022 shares its name and shape with its predecessor and the other models in the current collection; the rest is a whole world to discover. The first unexpected novelty was the Cerachrom bezel with an unprecedented combination of green and black.
But the shocking detail of this watch, which after almost two weeks we all know well by now even if everything can be said unless we are still used to it, is that winding crown – and the inevitable shoulders that protect it – all elements that sprout from the left side of the crate. If it had been a Panerai we would not even have noticed it so much the Maison of Florentine origins has accustomed us to this configuration designed for left-handers, those who wear the watch on the right wrist by nature, not for a habit.
Faced with this aesthetic revolution which, in particular, no one would have bet a lira for a Rolex, the look of the GMT-Master II 126720VTNR is identical to contemporary models: glass with cyclops lens to enlarge the date window that appears here on the left, availability both of Oyster bracelet in Oystersteel steel with the Easylink adjustment system, and of the same material but Jubilee type. At least we know that if this “right-handed” fake rolex (another way to call left-handed watches) is made for years – which I don’t really think will happen anyway and will motivate you further down – the next update will only be about a new movement.
The mechanics also offer nothing new. The left-handed GMT features the proprietary caliber 3285, the Maison’s most up-to-date automatic movement with independent time zone, with Chronergy escapement and a 70-hour power reserve with the latest Superlative Chronometer certification.
Unpublished, Left, But Complicated To Build?
Before this year, Rolex never put a left-handed watch into regular production: this is the real news.
In the official press release in English of the new green and black GMT, which appeared on the web subdomain newsroom.rolex.com starting at 8.30 o’clock last March 30, the date and time of opening of the Watches & Wonders 2022 Show, in the initial paragraph a sentence translated below reads:
“On this watch, the crown and crown guard are located on the left side of the case. This required modifying the precision test process for some of the final checks performed as part of the superlative chronometer certification. ” NB You can check: Rolex press releases are downloadable by anyone.
I honestly don’t understand the meaning of that sentence.
That probably the brand had to carry out many modifications is possible, but in the case these must have involved more the machinery to produce the new reference 126720VTNR for left-handed people than the watch itself, given that as regards the movement, as is commonly done in watchmaking, to make the winding crown appear on the left it was trivially rotated by 180 °.
Could it be that the same thing happened to the cashier? I do not know this. Not having seen it live and taken in hand so I can’t say it. The dial therefore has the date window on the opposite side, but operationally speaking, making it at 9 o’clock instead of 3 o’clock does not seem a great difficulty to me.
If for the new GMT-Master II Rolex had wanted to make a technical refinement, he could have shown the winding crown on the left side of the case, but the date on the right, as in the normal versions and thus maintaining the symmetry of the dial intact.
But since the caliber 3285, however you turn it, has a date window on the opposite side of the winding crown, and this movement has an integrated date window, to make it appear in the normal position at 3 o’clock in Geneva the technicians and watchmakers of the brand should have make a new movement. But Rolex’s goal / vision has always been neither to build Haute Horlogerie nor complicated, so it was to be expected that after simply turning the movement the date would also be on the left. In short, building a Rolex GMT-Master II for left-handed people was not difficult.
