Reference:1807: Difference between revisions

The 1807 is the bark-finish Day-Date. It shares the 4-digit President's case, movement and dial catalogue with the fluted [[Reference:1803|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 finish drew few buyers when new.

The bark finish ran through the 1960s and into the 1970s alongside the plain 1803. No Rolex production figure has surfaced. The texture sold slowly when new, which is why bark and Florentine examples are scarcer in the record than the fluted 1803. 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.

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. Surviving examples are comparatively scarce. The bark itself outlasted the 4-digit era and returned on the 5-digit [[Reference:18078|18078]].

A wider search turns up considerably more bark 1807s at the major houses than a first pass suggests. 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). An original bark bracelet carries much of the value on any of these; decades of servicing often swapped bark center links for plain ones, so an example that keeps its full bark commands a clear premium over one that does not.

* [[Reference:1803|Day-Date 1803]] — Fluted President (1960–1977)

* [[Reference:6510|Day-Date 6510]] — 1956–1957