I've been eying this GMT for a while and its bothering me, because I know I've seen one just like it in a book somewhere. This 6542 has two features in particular that are unusual: 1: The bezel is a sub-style bezel, this can most likely be explained by the original bakelite bezel falling apart and not being available later due to it being radium, many of these are missing bezels. 2: This is the interesting part. It has a straight dagger style 24 hour hand. Now I KNOW I've seen this before, in a book, but I simply can't place it. The dial looks nice, the movement looks good, and there seams to be some interest. I went and visited the dealer today, and the owner of the company, who was extremely knowledgeable also swore he'd seen a picture of one but couldn't place it. Its probably going to go well above my discretionary watch spending limit for the year but I'm very keen to see where it gets to in the bidding, and how it is restored (whether the 24 hour hand is retained due to being original, or replaced with a more typical small arrow head hand). http://cgi.ebay.com.au/1-OWNER-50s-...istwatches&hash=item588d4f4756#ht_4680wt_1222Purchases made through these links may earn this site a commission from the eBay Partner Network
The best about this 6542 is the dial, but it would take some money to restore it to the original condition. I'm pretty sure the dagger hand is not Rolex. A metal insert shouldn't be too hard to find, but finding a hand that matches the lume would probably be a pain.
I saw a 6542 locally with everything correct, it had a tropic dial as well. I believe the asking price was $20,000 though...
Metal bezel with nice intact radium tropical dial would suit me just fine can you imagine banging a 20K piece of brittle plastic into a doorjam!?!?