Reference:1804: Difference between revisions

|title=Rolex Day-Date 1804, The Gem-Set President (Diamond Bezel, Platinum Arabic)

|description=The Rolex 1804 is the gem-set, diamond-bezel member of the 4-digit Day-Date group. Built on the 1803 case and caliber 1555/1556, offered in gold and platinum, with the platinum Eastern-Arabic examples among the most valuable 4-digit Day-Dates.

The 1804 is the gem-set Day-Date, the diamond-bezel member of the 4-digit President group. It is built on the same 36mm case and caliber 1555/1556 movement as the fluted [[Reference:1803|1803]], with a factory diamond-set bezel in place of the fluting. Rolex made it in yellow, white and pink gold and in platinum, and platinum is where the reference earns its reputation. The platinum 1804s, several carrying Eastern-Arabic calendar discs made for Gulf clients, are among the most valuable 4-digit Day-Dates of all, and they sit far above the gold examples in both rarity and price.

| catalogue from 1961 (alongside the 1803 and 1806) into the late 1970s (4-digit era)

| factory diamond-set; 44 round brilliants the platinum standard, the count set per example

| President, including gem-set President on the high-jewellery examples; Jubilee on special order

The 1804 is the jewellery member of the 4-digit Day-Date group. Where the textured siblings work the gold surface itself, the 1806 with a Florentine cross-hatch, the [[Reference:1807|1807]] with bark and the 1811 with the Morellis moiré, the 1804 sets diamonds into the bezel and leaves the gold polished. It is the reference Rolex reached for when a Day-Date was meant to be as much jewellery as watch.

Everything behind the bezel is 1803. The 36mm case, the caliber 1555/1556 movement, the quickset-free day-and-date mechanism and the President bracelet all carry over, and the [[Reference:1803|1803]] entry holds the full account. What sets the 1804 apart is metal and stones. It is the 4-digit reference most often seen in platinum, and the gold diamond-bezel examples trade as dressed-up Presidents while the platinum ones, especially those with Arabic calendar discs, sit in a different market altogether.

The 1804 appears in the Rolex catalogue from 1961, alongside the 1802, the fluted 1803 and the Florentine 1806, on the printed-archive research in Giorgia and Guido Mondani's ''Rolex Day-Date'' (Guido Mondani Editore). Physical production tracks the 1803 from around 1960. The reference carries no serial sequence of its own but shares the 1803's case-serial stream, and documented platinum and gold examples run from case numbers around 549,000 in 1960 and 740,000 in 1961, through roughly 1,526,000 in 1967 and 1,865,000 around 1969, to about 5,028,000 by 1978. The run closes with the 4-digit era in 1977-78, when the 5-digit references take over and split the diamond-bezel Day-Date by metal, the 18048 in yellow gold, the 18049 in white gold and the 18046 in platinum. No Rolex production figure has surfaced for the 1804, and like the other non-fluted siblings it sold in small numbers against the volume 1803.

The 1804 uses the standard 4-digit Day-Date movement, caliber 1555 from the start, replaced by caliber 1556 around 1965 with the 19,800 vph rate, the extra jewel and the free-sprung Microstella balance. Hacking seconds arrived across the 1500 family in 1972, and no 4-digit Day-Date has quickset, so day and date advance only by running the hands through midnight. The platinum and gem-set cases carry the same movement as the plain 1803; there is no 1804-specific caliber. The [[Reference:Movements]] page holds the caliber lineage, and the [[Reference:1803|1803]] entry covers the 1555-to-1556 transition in detail.

The 1804 took the standard 4-digit Day-Date dials, but its signature configurations are the gem-set and special ones.

Diamond-set hour markers, round brilliants on silvered or champagne grounds with larger stones at 6 and 9, are the standard gem dial and the most common 1804 face. Sotheby's catalogued a platinum example with a blue diamond-index dial dated to about 1978. The yellow-gold "Octopussy" pairs a champagne dial with blue sapphire baguette markers, the most heavily jewelled of the documented dials.

Two named dials carry the reference's reputation. The "Brooklyn Bridge", a platinum 1961 example, runs a linear geometric engraved dial with eight round-brilliant markers and two baguettes at 6 and 9, named for the bridge-cable pattern of the engraving; the nickname traces to the 2015 Phillips sale that brought the watch to market rather than to any published source. The "Scheherazade" is the collector Pucci Papaleo's name for the Eastern-Arabic configuration, applied white-gold Arabic numerals with an Arabic day-and-date disc on platinum. It reached print in ''Day-Date, The Presidential Rolex'' (Pucci Papaleo Editore, 2015), the monograph Papaleo published with photography by Fabio Santinelli and text by Paolo Gobbi. The name covers a small group of watches, not one piece.

Stella lacquer turns up on the 1804 in its own right, running baby-blue on platinum, sea-foam and peppermint green and pink on white gold, and carmine red and burgundy, several paired with baguette diamond markers, across the early-to-late 1970s. Stone dials such as onyx belong to the 5-digit diamond references rather than the 4-digit 1804, and an onyx-on-platinum 1804 is not documented. The deep dial taxonomy that spans the whole President line sits on the [[Reference:1803|1803]] entry; on the 1804 the bezel stones share the billing with whatever is under them.

 

The 1804 shares the 1803's case and caseback, to the point that Phillips catalogued a yellow-gold 1804 whose inner caseback is stamped 1803. Attribution therefore rests on the reference engraved between the lugs and on the gem-set bezel, not on the caseback stamp. Factory gem-setting is the value driver, and aftermarket stones are common on Day-Dates, so a genuine 1804 is read from Rolex paperwork and from the quality and pattern of the setting.

The 1804 wears the President, with gem-set President bracelets on the high-jewellery examples and Jubilee fitments on some special orders. As with any vintage President, a clasp date code dates the bracelet, which may be older or newer than the head, and decades of service can put a later bracelet on an earlier head. The cross-family bracelet detail sits on [[Reference:Bracelets]].

The platinum case with an Eastern-Arabic calendar disc is the 1804's signature and its most valuable branch. Rolex offered platinum Day-Dates with Arabic script to Gulf clients from the late 1950s; auction-house catalogues tie the choice of platinum to a preference among Muslim clients, for whom gold is discouraged for men, a rationale that is widely repeated but not documented in a Rolex order record. The configuration, nicknamed "Scheherazade" by Pucci Papaleo, pairs applied white-gold Arabic numerals and an Arabic day-and-date disc with a diamond bezel. Phillips sold a 1960 example for CHF 185,000 in 2015, and Antiquorum a separate c.1966 example for HKD 1,375,000 in 2023. SJX's history of the Arabic Day-Date calls the platinum Arabic 1804 the ultimate Arabic Rolex of its era.

A platinum 1961 1804 with a linear geometric engraved dial, named "Brooklyn Bridge" for the dial's bridge-cable pattern, sold at Phillips in Geneva in May 2015 for CHF 305,000, the highest documented 1804 result. It is a distinct watch from the Arabic "Scheherazade" sold in the same auction, and the two are easily confused because both are platinum with a 44-diamond bezel.

Platinum 1804s carry Omani Khanjar dials, the crossed-daggers emblem applied by the London retailer Asprey for Sultan Qaboos. Le Monde Edmond records a platinum Khanjar 1804 sold at Christie's in 2014 for CHF 311,000, then a record for any Day-Date, though the engraved reference on that lot is not independently confirmed. One Khanjar 1804 is confirmed by its engraved reference. Phillips sold "The Flaming Sword", a 1975 example pairing a burgundy Stella dial with the Khanjar emblem, for CHF 191,000 in the 2015 Glamorous Day-Date sale, and the 1802, 1803 and 1831 carry confirmed Omani examples of the same period. Asprey and the Muscat distributor Khimji Ramdas are the names that recur on the Gulf Day-Dates of the era.

The platinum 1804s anchor the reference's auction record, several multiples above the gold examples. The Phillips "Glamorous Day-Date" sale in Geneva in May 2015 ran two platinum lots in a single session, the geometric "Brooklyn Bridge" at CHF 305,000 and the Eastern-Arabic "Scheherazade" at CHF 185,000, both against CHF 50,000–100,000 estimates. Antiquorum sold a second platinum Arabic example in Hong Kong in 2023 for HKD 1,375,000, the highest confirmed 1804 result, and Monaco Legend Group sold a third in Monaco in 2022 for EUR 260,000. Gold examples sit lower, in the tens of thousands, with the striking exception of the yellow-gold "Octopussy", whose 48-diamond bezel, sapphire-baguette dial and gem-set President bracelet carried it to CHF 203,200, the only gold result to reach the platinum band. Stella-dial examples and plain diamond-index examples in white and yellow gold trade in the CHF/EUR 30,000–60,000 range. Original factory gem-setting and unpolished cases are the value drivers throughout.