Well, link they weren't hot sellers at the time – and while watch buyers didn't come out in droves for the GV either, there was at least some level of data that showed it to be a successful model. It's so link successful, in fact, that it's been a link constant in the catalogue for going on 15 years. That is a literal eternity when it comes to Rolex references. We're talking 5513 Submariner- and 1016 Explorer-level runs here.

With replica tag-heuer uhren the 6542, we see that gold examples have been part of the replica cartier uhren mix from the early days of the GMT-Master, making it the first of Rolex's sport watches to be made in gold (though link there were certain pre-Daytona chronographs made in gold). The literally high-flying world of international commercial aviation was better suited to precious-metal tool watches than the SCUBA environment that gave rise to the Rolex Submariner just a couple of years earlier, it seems.