GMT-Master II Pepsi Bezel

The Rolex GMT-Master II 126710BLRO is, without question, the most beautiful watch I have ever seen. That is true, and it is also not really why I want one.

My great grandfather was born and raised in Hawaii and worked for the local electric company. He and my great grandmother raised one child, my grandmother. I met him as an infant, so everything I have of him is secondhand — stories that begin with his nickname, "Grumpy," which was usually the whole point of the story.

They were not affluent, but they came from cultures that were serious about owning jewelry, and they were serious about it themselves. As far as I can tell it did a few jobs at once: they liked how it looked, it held value, and it was meant to go to somebody eventually. At some point along the way, Grumpy owned one of the first Rolex Pepsis.

That is where my grandfather comes in. Early on with my grandmother, he was promised he would inherit it. I don't know whether it was the heirloom, the one that mattered most, but it is one of the ones he has talked about my whole life, which tells you something.

Here is how it ended. Grumpy was a passenger on a Hawaiian highway, asleep, with his hand out the window. When they got where they were going, the watch was gone. They turned around and looked for hours. They never found it.

Which is a sad story. Terrible, if true.

We laugh about it. Not because we're cruel, but because that watch is one of a long line of unusual heirlooms in this family, and every one of them was acquired or lost in an unusual way. There is an enormous gold ring, encrusted with diamonds, with my aunt's initials on it, which he supposedly bought for her — and no equivalent story exists for any of his other granddaughters. What we do know for certain is that Grumpy was a prolific gambler and I have found his arrest record in a local newspaper from the time. And the through line in every heirloom story is that a lot of these pieces left his hands in smoky rooms, on losing ones.

So the highway is probably a highway. It's also possible the highway is a card table.

This only brings my family joy. The Rolex part of it isn't what makes it special — what makes it special is that four generations of us know the same story, that it is a piece of the family's actual history, and that on top of all of that it happens to be a very cool watch. Which is why I would like to own one. Somebody in this family ought to restore balance to the gambling track record.

That would be reason enough. It also happens to be my favorite watch, full stop.

The bezel is the first part. The colors are enough to be exciting without being loud. The Submariner is obviously the icon and I love it separately, for different occasions, but the Pepsi has exactly the amount of personality I want to wear.

The second part is what it is. Built for Pan Am. It introduced the GMT, or at least it's the reason anybody has one. The red and blue are supposed to be there so you can tell day from night at a glance, and I am a little skeptical of that — it isn't obvious to me why red should mean day when yellow is right there. My suspicion is that they picked red and blue for the same reason I like red and blue. Either way, I have a soft spot for watches that actually changed something about the industry rather than just looking like they did.

The third part is the Jubilee, which I am completely taken with. The Pepsi is nominally a sports watch, but let's be honest, at this point it's jewelry. The Jubilee is the most honest version of that. Steel, so it keeps its end of the sports bargain, on the bracelet Rolex puts on the dressy Datejusts and Sky-Dwellers. That's the right pairing.

The Pepsi has been discontinued, and I have never had the kind of spare money that would make buying one feel justifiable anyway. So what I'm actually waiting on is Rolex bringing it back, ideally at the same moment in my life when I can justify it. And if they never do, or if I don't like what they bring back, I would be just as happy with something close to what Grumpy had, or with the last generation they made.