Rolex Day-Date 18078

Day-Date › 18078

The 18078 is the bark-finish Day-Date of the sapphire-crystal era and the 5-digit successor to the 4-digit bark 1807. It is a yellow-gold President whose bezel and bracelet centre links carry the coarse vertical “bark” texture, called écorce in French, while the case flanks stay polished. It uses caliber 3055 and a sapphire crystal; catalogued examples date from the late 1970s through the 1980s. Surviving examples have champagne and silvered dials as well as wood, hardstone, lacquered Stella and Omani Khanjar configurations.

Core facts

detail	value
reference	18078
family	Day-Date
production	circa 1977/78 to 1988
movement	caliber 3055, 27 jewels, 28,800 vph, single quickset (date); sapphire era
case	36mm 18k yellow gold President
crystal	sapphire
bezel	bark (écorce) finish
bracelet	President 8385 with bark-finished centre links, hidden Crownclasp, solid links
dial	Documented examples include champagne and silver stick, wood/burl, hardstone, Stella, Roman, diamond-index and Khanjar dials
crown	Twinlock screw-down
siblings	18038 (fluted), 18048 (diamond), 18079 (white-gold bark), 18039 / 18049 (white-gold fluted / diamond)
predecessor	1807 (4-digit bark)
successor	18248 (bark, caliber 3155, double quickset)

Where it sits in the line

The 18078 is the bark member of the first 5-digit Day-Date generation, the sapphire-crystal continuation of the bark line that runs from the 4-digit 1807. The 5-digit references split by metal and finish: the 18038 is the yellow-gold fluted reference, the 18048 carries the diamond bezel, and the bark appears in yellow gold as the 18078 and in white gold as the 18079. The bark is a coarse vertical texture, distinct from the finer cross-hatched Florentine of the 1806 and the watered moiré Morellis of the 1811.

The 18078 shares the 5-digit Day-Date platform with the 18038, including caliber 3055, sapphire crystal and the President bracelet family. The finish and dial configuration are the main points of comparison between surviving examples.

Production outline

The 18078 ran from the late 1970s, when the 5-digit references took over with sapphire crystals and the caliber 3055, until 1988, when the caliber 3155 arrived. Bark-finished Day-Dates continued into the caliber-3155 era, so the 18078 should be kept separate from the later 18248. No Rolex production figure has surfaced. The surviving auction record shows variation in dial material, markers and special-order markings.

Movement notes

The 18078 runs the caliber 3055, the first quickset Day-Date movement: 27 jewels, 28,800 vph, with a date quickset from the crown. The day still has to be advanced by running the hands through midnight, since the day quickset did not arrive until the caliber 3155 in 1988. The movement is the shared sapphire-era Day-Date caliber, COSC-certified and identical to the one in the fluted 18038 and the diamond 18048; the bark changes the surface of the gold, not the watch underneath. The Reference:Movements page holds the caliber lineage, and the 18038 entry covers the 3055 in detail.

Dial map

Bark Rolex 18078 with tiger-eye dial — A bark 18078 with a tiger-eye hardstone dial — the textured case is collected as a pairing with an exotic dial.

The common configuration is a champagne or silvered stick dial. Beyond that the reference is closely associated with wood and burl dials, birch, mahogany, walnut and burlwood, which suit the organic bark texture and are the signature pairing. Hardstone dials in onyx, tiger-eye and lapis appear from the early-1980s exotic-dial window, lacquered Stella colours such as burgundy and blue turn up with diamond markers, and Roman-numeral and diamond-index dials round out the range. A champagne 18078 carrying the Omani Khanjar emblem and an Arabic day disc documents the reference's reach into the Gulf special orders. The dial taxonomy that spans the whole President line sits on the 1803 entry.

Case, bezel, crystal, and crown

The case is the 36mm yellow-gold Oyster shared across the 5-digit Day-Date, with a sapphire crystal and Cyclops, a Twinlock screw-down crown and a screw-down caseback. The defining feature is the bark finish, a coarse vertical woodgrain worked into the bezel. The case flanks and lugs stay polished, so the texture reads as a deliberate band around the dial rather than an all-over treatment.

Bracelets, end links, and clasps

The 18078 wears the President bracelet, reference 8385, with the concealed Crownclasp and the solid links of the 5-digit era. The bark carries onto the bracelet's centre links, so the texture runs unbroken from the bezel down the length of the bracelet. That continuity is a useful inspection point. A bracelet with plain replacement centre links should be recorded as such, since clasp and bracelet dates apply to the bracelet rather than automatically to the watch head. As with any President, a clasp date code dates the bracelet, which may be older or newer than the head, and the cross-family detail sits on Reference:Bracelets.

Special branches

Bark with an exotic dial

Auction catalogues show the bark case paired with several dial types. Wood and burl dials recur in the cited records, while other lots document hardstone, Stella and special-order dials. These lots establish configurations of individual watches, not a complete factory option list.

The Omani Khanjar

Bark Rolex 18078 with Omani Khanjar emblem — A bark 18078 carrying the green Omani Khanjar emblem and an Arabic day disc — the textured case turned to a Gulf special order.

Phillips catalogued a bark 18078 at the Geneva Watch Auction XVIII in 2023 with a green Omani Khanjar emblem and an Arabic day disc. The lot documents that individual configuration; it does not establish how many such watches were made.

Auction record

The cited auction record includes tiger-eye, onyx, Stella, birch and Khanjar configurations. Antiquorum sold a tiger-eye example in Hong Kong in 2015 for HKD 237,500 and an onyx example with a bark-and-diamond bezel in Geneva in 2016 for CHF 18,750. Sotheby’s catalogued a burgundy Stella diamond example in 2018 as unsold and a birch wood-dial example in 2023. For the 2024 blue Stella lot, the catalogue page and a Sotheby’s editorial report give different sale-status information; the discrepancy is retained in the table rather than resolved as a general market rule.

date	house	configuration	result
2015	Antiquorum Hong Kong, lot 661	tiger-eye dial	HKD 237,500
2016	Antiquorum Geneva, lot 467	onyx dial, bark-and-diamond bezel	CHF 18,750
2018	Sotheby's Geneva, lot 223	burgundy Stella diamond dial	unsold
2023	Sotheby's Fine Watches, lot 205	"Birch" wood dial	not sold (est. USD 20,000–40,000)
2024	Sotheby's Hong Kong, lot 2106	blue Stella diamond dial	HKD 336,000 per Sotheby's editorial; lot page reads unsold

Related references

Day-Date 18028, 1977–1988
Day-Date 18038, caliber 3055 President (1977–1988)
Day-Date 18048, 1977–1988
Day-Date 19018, Oysterquartz President (1977–2001)
Day-Date 18208, 1988–2000
Day-Date 18238, 1988–2000

Sources