There is a Rolex that half the collecting world calls the Steve McQueen. McQueen never wore one. No photograph of him wearing it has ever surfaced, no auction has ever carried his provenance on one, and the researchers who went looking came back with nothing. The watch he actually wore, constantly and in public, was a Submariner, a 5512 that sold at auction in 2009 for $234,000, and a 5513 he gave to his stuntman.
The name stuck anyway. The Explorer II 1655 is still the Steve McQueen, in dealer listings, in auction catalogues, and in the price it commands. That is worth sitting with for a moment, because it says something true about this hobby: a nickname is not a description of a watch. It is a market instrument, and like any instrument it can be accurate, decorative, or simply wrong, and it will go on working either way.
This file carries eighty-seven references across eight families, and a large number of them answer to a name that Rolex, Omega and Seiko never printed on anything. Sorting those names by what is actually behind them turns out to be a useful exercise, because the three categories carry very different weight when money changes hands.
Names that were earned
The strongest nicknames attach to a documented object or a documented event, and they survive scrutiny because there is something underneath them.
The Seiko 6139-6002 is called the Pogue because Colonel William Pogue bought one with his own money and wore it aboard Skylab 4 in 1973 and 1974, making it, by most accounts, the first automatic chronograph worn in space. The watch itself later went to auction. This is provenance in its cleanest form: a specific serial, a specific mission, a specific wrist.
The 6105-8110 is the Willard because Martin Sheen wears one as Captain Willard through Apocalypse Now, on screen, visible, for the length of a very long film. Nobody has to take that on faith.
The Omega 105.003 is the Ed White because Ed White wore one outside a Gemini capsule during the first American spacewalk in 1965. The Moonwatch earned its name a different way again, not through a celebrity but through a qualification process: NASA tested chronographs to destruction and the Speedmaster was the one that survived, which is the subject of its own dossier.
And then there is the counterexample to McQueen, which is almost too neat. The two-tone GMT-Master 16753 is called the Clint Eastwood because Eastwood wore his own personal watch, not a wardrobe piece, in Firefox in 1982, Tightrope in 1984, and In the Line of Fire in 1993. Same actor category, same decade, same kind of claim, and this one holds up completely. Some collectors call it the Dirty Harry instead.
Names that simply describe
The second category makes no claim about anybody. These names are shorthand invented by collectors because the official reference numbers are unpronounceable and the watches needed something to be called in conversation.
Root Beer is the purest example. The brown and gold scheme on the 1675/3 and its successors reminded American collectors of a glass of root beer, the name attached in the 1970s, and it has been in continuous use for more than fifty years, which makes it one of the oldest surviving Rolex nicknames. German speaking collectors looked at the same dial and said Tigerauge, tiger's eye, which is the same instinct in a different language and now marks a specific mid-run dial variant.
Pepsi and Coke work identically: red and blue, red and black, named after soft drinks because that is what the bezels look like. The 16710 could be ordered in either, plus all black, which means one reference answers to several names depending on which insert it is wearing.
Seiko's are the bluntest of all. The Turtle is called the Turtle because the cushion case looks like a turtle shell. The Tuna is called the Tuna because the shrouded case looks like a tuna can. The Italians looked at the 1655's orange hand and called it the Freccione, the big arrow, which is the most literal name in this article and arguably the best.
One of these deserves special mention because it is unkind and it stuck anyway. The 16760 is the Fat Lady, named for a case thickened to hold the caliber 3085, with Sophia Loren circulating as the politer alternative. Nobody at Rolex chose either.
Names that are wrong
Which brings us back to the 1655. The origin of the McQueen error is itself disputed. One account holds that an Italian magazine reported in the mid 1970s that he wore one and the claim propagated from there. Another holds that Rolex used his image in advertising around the reference, and that the association migrated from the advertisement to the wrist. The file records both explanations rather than choosing, because there is no document that settles it.
What is not disputed is the underlying fact. The evidence for McQueen wearing a 1655 does not exist, and the evidence for him wearing Submariners is extensive and photographic.
The interesting part is what happened next, which is nothing. The correction has been public for years. Every serious guide now carries it. The nickname is unaffected, the premium is unaffected, and dealers still list the watch as the Steve McQueen because that is what buyers search for. A market can know a story is false and keep transacting on it, as long as everyone agrees which watch the false story refers to.
What a nickname is actually worth
All three categories move money, but they should not move it the same way, and the distinction is practical rather than philosophical.
An earned name attached to a specific object, the Pogue's own watch, is provenance, and provenance is the most valuable and most forgeable thing in this hobby. An earned name attached to a reference, meaning every 6139-6002 rather than Pogue's particular one, buys you association and nothing more. The watch on your wrist did not go to Skylab.
A descriptive name buys you nothing at all, because it describes something you can see in the photograph. Root Beer is not a grade. A Turtle is a shape.
And a mistaken name buys you a story that turned out to be wrong, which is worth considering before paying for it. The 1655 is a genuinely interesting watch: thirteen years in production, built for people working underground, commercially unsuccessful for most of its life, and now scarce for exactly that reason. It does not need Steve McQueen. Its place in the Explorer file is secure without him.
What the file does with them
This site records nicknames, because ignoring them would be pretending the market speaks a language it does not speak. Nobody searches for reference 6139-6002. They search for the Pogue.
What the file will not do is launder a nickname into a fact. Where the name rests on documented provenance, the reference page says so. Where it rests on a story that does not survive checking, the page says that too, which is why the 1655's file notes that the attribution is unsupported and the watch in the photographs is a Submariner. Same policy that governs the dates: the 1016's introduction is recorded with its three competing years attached rather than flattened to one, and the 16753's dial split is recorded as the serial evidence has it.
Buy the watch, not the name. The name is free, the premium is not, and the difference between the Pogue and the McQueen is entirely a question of whether anyone ever checked.