Reference:1807

Day-Date › 1807

The 1807 in yellow gold: bark finish on the bezel and the President bracelet's center links, champagne stick dial.

The 1807 is the bark-finish Day-Date. It shares the 4-digit President's case, movement and dial catalogue with the fluted 1803 and differs in one thing: the gold carries a coarse vertical "bark" texture, écorce in French, across the bezel and the bracelet's center links. Rolex sold it through the 1960s and into the 1970s as one of a small group of decorated 4-digit references, next to the Florentine 1806 and the Morellis-finish 1811. The cited sources describe the bark finish as a period-specific alternative to fluting.

Core facts

detail	value
reference	1807
family	Day-Date
production	1960s into the 1970s (4-digit era)
movement	caliber 1555 (to c. 1965), then caliber 1556 to the end of the run; hacking from 1972; no quickset
case	36mm 18k gold President — yellow, white, pink/rose gold
crystal	acrylic
bezel	bark (écorce) finish
bracelet	President with bark-finished center links
dial	the 4-digit Day-Date catalogue (champagne and silver stick the volume choice; the same special dials offered on the 1803)
crown	Twinlock screw-down
sibling references	1803 (fluted), 1804 (gem-set), 1806 (Florentine), 1811 (Morellis moiré)
predecessor	originals-era 6610 / 6611 / 6612 cluster
successor	5-digit 18078, which carries the bark finish forward

Where it sits in the line

The 4-digit Day-Date split by finish on a shared case and movement. The 1803 took the fluted bezel, the 1804 a gem-set one, the 1806 the fine Florentine hand-engraving, the 1811 the Morellis moiré, and the 1807 the coarser bark. Florentine and bark can be confused. On the 1807, the bark texture continues across the bezel and the bracelet's center links.

The remaining specifications are shared with the 1803: the 36mm gold case, President bracelet, caliber 1555/1556 movements, and broad dial catalogue. The bark finish is the defining distinction. The 1803 entry carries the full dial taxonomy, the movement transition, and the President bracelet history for the whole 4-digit group.

Production outline

The bark finish ran through the 1960s and into the 1970s alongside the plain 1803. No Rolex production figure has surfaced. The auction record contains fewer bark and Florentine examples than fluted 1803 examples, but that sample does not establish factory output. Documented examples cover the span, from silver- and champagne-dialled yellow-gold pieces in the mid-1960s on the caliber 1555 to later ones into the early 1970s on the hacking caliber 1556.

Movement notes

The 1807 uses the same movement as the rest of the 4-digit Day-Date, caliber 1555 from the start of the run and caliber 1556 from around 1965. The 1556 raised the beat to 19,800 vph through a gear-train change, carrying over the free-sprung Microstella balance of the 1555; hacking seconds were added to the caliber mid-production in 1972. No 4-digit Day-Date has quickset, so the date and day advance only by running the hands through midnight. The Reference:Movements page holds the caliber lineage, and the 1803 entry covers the 1555-to-1556 transition in detail.

Dial map

The 1807 came with the standard 4-digit Day-Date dials, champagne and silver with applied gold stick markers documented, and as a catalogue sibling of the 1803 it could be ordered with the same special dials. Documented bark examples include linen-textured Sigma dials and darker grey and Havana-brown dials set against the gold bark. The bark is what defines the reference; dial choice is shared across the group, and the 1803 entry carries the variant taxonomy.

Export-market dials turn up in the record too: Antiquorum catalogued a circa-1968 example (case No. 2550819) with the day spelled out in Spanish at 12 o'clock, and a circa-1973 example (case No. 3384335) with ten baguette indexes on a dial signed for retailer Tiffany & Co.

Case, bezel, crystal, and crown

The bark texture up close on a grey-dial 1807, running across the bezel and the bracelet center links.

The case is the 36mm three-piece gold Oyster shared across the 4-digit Day-Date, with a Twinlock screw-down crown, screw-down caseback and acrylic crystal. The defining feature is the bezel. In place of the 1803's fluting the 1807 carries a bark finish, a coarse vertical texture deeper and more irregular than the engine-turning on a Datejust and meant to resemble tree bark. It was made in yellow, white and pink gold to match the case.

Bracelets, end links, and clasps

The 1807 wears the President with the bark carried onto the bracelet's center links, so the texture runs from the bezel all the way down the bracelet. That full-length bark is what separates an 1807 from a watch that simply has a textured bezel. As with any vintage President, a clasp date code dates the bracelet, which may be older or newer than the head, and the Reference:Bracelets page holds the cross-family bracelet detail.

Special branches

The bark family

The 1807 belongs to a small group of textured 4-digit Day-Dates: the Florentine 1806, the bark 1807, and the Morellis 1811. These textured finishes were a 1960s fashion. The cited records contain fewer examples than the fluted 1803 records. The bark itself outlasted the 4-digit era and returned on the 5-digit 18078.

A white gold, blue-dial example

A white gold bark-finish example with a blue dial, Christie's lot photography

Christie's Dubai, sale 21097 (2022), lot 222, catalogued a white gold bark-finish 1807 with a blue dial. The other examples cited here are yellow gold with champagne, silver, grey, or Havana-brown dials. The Christie’s lot documents the white-gold and blue-dial combination, but does not establish how often Rolex made it.

Oman market examples

Rolex fitted the Sultanate of Oman's Khanjar dagger emblem near 6 o'clock on watches sold into that market, a branch already documented on the 5-digit 18078 and traceable back to this 4-digit reference. Antiquorum sold a yellow-gold Khanjar-marked 1807 (case No. 3351000, movement No. DD417164, circa 1972) at its Hong Kong sale in December 2021 for HKD 425,000, well above its HKD 290,000–390,000 estimate; the same watch, identified by matching case and movement numbers, returned to the block at Antiquorum Hong Kong in May 2022 and did not sell that time. A separate white-gold bark example (case No. 3657048, circa 1974) carries a dial signed for Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said, Oman's ruler from 1970 to 2020 — a personal presentation piece rather than the retailer-applied Khanjar mark, and one white-gold bark 1807 in the cited record; it went unsold against a CHF 30,000–50,000 estimate at Antiquorum's Geneva sale in May 2023.

Auction record

The cited auction record includes multiple bark 1807 examples from Antiquorum and other houses. Antiquorum alone has catalogued at least seven since 2019, across Geneva, Hong Kong, Monaco, and Milan. Prices for plain yellow-gold examples run from EUR 8,820 (Milan, April 2025, case No. 1325193, caliber 1555) to EUR 9,100 for a circa-1968 piece with the Spanish day disc described above (Monaco, July 2019, case No. 2550819). The retailer-signed Tiffany & Co. dial with baguette indexes made CHF 35,000 at Antiquorum's Geneva sale in May 2021 (case No. 3384335) — well above its CHF 18,000–28,000 estimate — though Antiquorum's own catalogue entry flags that watch's caseback as stamped 1803 rather than 1807, a documented instance of the case/reference mismatch this cluster of 4-digit references is prone to; the dial signature and sale still tie it to the 1807 line, but the case swap means it should not be read as a stock example of the reference's own case construction. The Oman-market pieces sit well above the general run, at HKD 425,000 (see above). Bracelet condition should be recorded separately: service work can replace bark centre links with plain links, and the cited lots differ in completeness and condition.

Related references

• Day-Date 1803, fluted President (1960–1977)
• Day-Date 1804
• Day-Date 1806
• Day-Date 1811
• Day-Date 1831
• Day-Date 6510, 1956–1957

See also the Day-Date family index, movement reference, bracelet & clasp guide, and serial numbers by year.

Sources

• The Vintage Rolex Field Manual — Colin A. White, Morning Tundra
• Monochrome editorial, "In-Depth: The History of the Rolex Day-Date, The Presidential Watch", Monochrome Watches
• Sotheby's editorial, "The Rolex Day-Date: A Complete Collector's Guide", Sotheby's
• Fratello editorial, "Rolex Day-Date — Historical Overview Of Rolex's Flagship", Fratello Watches
• WatchBase editorial, "Rolex Day-Date History", WatchBase, 2015-02-21
• Italian Watch Spotter editorial, "The History of the Rolex Day-Date", Italian Watch Spotter
• The Beautiful Watch editorial, "A Brief History of the Rolex Day-Date", The Beautiful Watch
• Jake Ehrlich, "1956 — The Very First Rolex Day-Date", Rolex Magazine (Jake's Rolex World), 2010-09
• Ottuhr editorial, "Rolex Day-Date 1803 Reference Report", Ottuhr
• Rolex Forums community, "Rolex Forums — 1803 Presidential Unusual Finishes", Rolex Forums
• Rolex ref. 1807 Day-Date, bark finish, lot 124 — Antiquorum, Milan (online), 17 April 2025
• Rolex ref. 1807 Day-Date, Spanish day disc, lot 256 — Antiquorum, Monaco, 16 July 2019
• Rolex ref. 1807 Day-Date, Oman Khanjar emblem, lot 125 — Antiquorum, Hong Kong, 5 December 2021
• Rolex ref. 1807 Day-Date, Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said signature, white gold, lot 403 — Antiquorum, Geneva, 15 May 2023
• Rolex ref. 1807 bark-finish Day-Date, Tiffany & Co. dial, lot 485 — Antiquorum, Geneva, 9 May 2021