Rolex Pepsi GMT Prices Are Going Nuclear As Discontinuation & Replacement Rumours Heat Up

Three weeks ago, we broke the news that the Rolex GMT Master II Pepsi was done. WatchPro had confirmed it, dealers were turning away waitlist customers, and the 126710BLRO was vanishing from AD websites like it never existed. At the time, I said the secondary market would lose its collective mind.

I underestimated.

What’s happened since makes the initial price bump look like a warm-up lap. Purchase requests for the Pepsi on Chrono24 surged more than 500% over the 2025 average in the first week of March alone. That’s not a typo. Five hundred percent. The kind of demand spike you normally see when a brand kills a model without warning, which is exactly what Rolex appears to have done.

The Numbers Tell One Story, The Charts Tell Another

Chrono24’s own pricing data for the 126710BLRO shows a trajectory that’s impossible to ignore. Over the past six months, the median price has climbed from around AU$31,000 to over AU$35,600, a 15.2% jump that’s accelerating as Watches and Wonders draws closer.

Zoom out to the max view and the chart looks like a heartbeat monitor that flatlined after the 2022 bubble, drifted sideways for two years, and is now showing clear signs of life again.

Over 6 months, since news broke, we’ve seen a decent pop in prices. Whether anyone is buying them is your guess.

In the US, the picture is sharper. EveryWatch data has the median dealer price pushing past US$26,000, up from the low US$24,000s just a month ago. Reported asking prices nudging toward US$30,000. The retail price, for context, is US$11,800 plus tax. We’re back to the watch trading at roughly two and a half times retail, and the gap is widening every week.

The market isn’t being driven by flippers chasing quick returns. It’s being driven by collectors who watched this watch get pulled from AD websites and realised the window is closing. That’s a different kind of buyer, and a more durable one.

The Ripple Effect Is Real

It’s not just the Pepsi moving. The Batgirl has surged past AU$40,000 on the secondary market. The Batman is holding firm above double retail. When one GMT reference exits the catalogue, every other reference in the family absorbs the pressure. Rolex collectors don’t stop wanting a GMT just because their first choice disappeared. They trade sideways into whatever’s available, and that drives every price in the lineup upward.

There’s a lot of supply sitting in safes and sock drawers around the world. Whether it surfaces depends entirely on what Rolex announces on April 14.

So What Comes Next? The Coke, The New Pepsi, Or Something Nobody Expected

This is where it gets genuinely interesting. There are three rumours circulating with varying degrees of credibility, and they all point in different directions.

The strongest candidate is the “Coke” GMT, the black and red bezel combination that was the original GMT Master II colourway back in 1982. Rolex filed a patent in 2022 specifically outlining a process for producing stable red and black ceramic using ceriated zirconia. That’s not a coincidence. That’s a roadmap. The Coke has never been made in modern Cerachrom ceramic, and with the Pepsi clearing the catalogue, the timing is almost too perfect.

Then there’s the theory that Rolex simply replaces the current Pepsi with an updated version. New saturated bezel colours, a ceramic dial like the green one added to the Sprite last year, maybe even more refined tones on the red and blue insert.

The wildcard? An all-blue bezel on steel. Rolex already has the blue ceramic tooling. Blue on blue, steel case, Jubilee bracelet. It would be an entirely new personality for the GMT lineup, and the kind of move that generates the exact frenzy Rolex thrives on.

Hold, Sell, Or Panic?

If you own a Pepsi, the calculus hasn’t changed since our last piece. Hold it. If Rolex announces a new Pepsi at Watches and Wonders, your current reference becomes the outgoing model with collector premiums baked in. If they don’t announce a replacement, your watch just became a whole lot rarer. Either way, the 126710BLRO is not going down in value anytime soon.

If you’re trying to buy one on the secondary market right now, you’re paying a premium that has at least another two weeks of upward pressure built into it. April 14 is the date. Everything between now and then is noise, speculation, and FOMO working exactly the way Rolex wants it to.

And if you’re sitting there thinking this is just another prediction season hype cycle that fizzles out, I’d gently remind you that every single previous discontinuation rumour about the Pepsi turned out to be wrong. This year, the rumour has Bloomberg, WatchPro, and a 500% surge in purchase requests behind it.

This one feels different. Which is exactly what makes it dangerous.

DMARGE’s Two Cents

Rolex has been playing this game for decades. They control supply better than any luxury brand on the planet, and every move they make with the GMT lineup is calibrated to do exactly what it’s doing right now: generate conversation, inflate secondary prices, and build anticipation for whatever lands in Geneva. The Pepsi isn’t dead. It’s being reborn. The only question is what colour its new suit will be.