Rolexopedia

Rolex Day-Date 1802


Day-Date › 1802

Yellow-gold Rolex Day-Date 1802 with a smooth polished bezel and silvered dial
Yellow-gold Rolex Day-Date 1802 with a smooth polished bezel and silvered dial


The 1802 is the smooth-bezel member of the four-digit Day-Date family. It shares the 36mm case, calibers 1555 and 1556, non-quickset calendar and bracelet options with the fluted 1803; the reference difference is the plain, gently domed bezel. Rolex made it in yellow, white and pink gold and platinum. Surviving examples include early pie-pan dials, lacquered Stella dials, tropical black dials and watches made for the Sultanate of Oman.


Core facts

detail value
reference 1802
family Day-Date
production alongside the 1803 from around 1960 to the 1977–78 changeover to the 5-digit references
movement caliber 1555, then caliber 1556 from around 1965; hacking from 1972; no quickset
case 36mm President in 18k yellow, white or pink gold, or platinum
crystal acrylic with Cyclops
bezel smooth, polished and gently domed — no fluting, gem-setting or texture
bracelet President; Jubilee on documented examples
dial pie-pan, doorstep, tropical black, Stella lacquer, diamond-set, English / French / Italian / Spanish / Eastern-Arabic calendar discs, Omani Qaboos and Khanjar
crown Twinlock screw-down
sibling references 1803 (fluted), 1804 (gem-set), 1806 (Florentine), 1807 (bark), 1811 (Morellis)
predecessor earlier Day-Date references 6510 / 6511 / 6611 / 6612
successor 5-digit 18028 (yellow gold), 18029 (white gold), 18026 (platinum), all smooth-bezel

Where it sits in the line

The four-digit Day-Date references are distinguished largely by bezel treatment. The 1802 has a smooth bezel; the 1803 is fluted; the 1804 is gem-set; the 1806 has a Florentine finish; the 1807 has a bark finish; and the 1811 has a Morellis finish. The last digit is a useful guide, but the number between the lugs remains the reference check.

The smooth bezel gives the watch a different profile from the fluted 1803. Published production totals for the two references are not available, so claims about relative scarcity should be treated as unverified. The same bezel choice continued with the five-digit 18028.

Rolex reference guides use 1800 for the four-digit Day-Date generation; the individual references include 1802 with a smooth bezel and 1803 with a fluted bezel. Auction catalogues have also used “ref. 1800” for individual watches. Christie’s called a 36 mm blue-dial Day-Date “ref. 1800” in its 2009 Hong Kong sale, while describing a fluted bezel. Its 2004 London catalogue used the same designation for a 1965 Omani-dial watch with a textured bezel and recorded case number 18078. These listings document Christie’s use of 1800, while its status as a separate bezel reference remains unresolved; neither catalogue shows the number between the lugs. For an individual watch, check the number between the lugs; caseback markings alone may refer to the broader case family.

Production outline

The 1802 runs with the rest of the 4-digit group from around 1960 to the 1977–78 changeover, and it shares the family case-serial stream rather than carrying a sequence of its own. Documented examples span most of that range: case numbers around 497,000 and 1,014,000 on early watches, 1,183,000 and 1,634,000 through the middle 1960s, 2,612,000 by the end of that decade, and 3,781,000 and 3,795,000 on the Omani watches of about 1974, reaching roughly 4,176,000 on late examples. When the 5-digit references took over, the smooth bezel split by metal into the 18028 in yellow gold, the 18029 in white gold and the 18026 in platinum. No Rolex production figure has been published for the 1802, and the available records do not establish its production relative to the 1803.

Movement notes

The 1802 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 additional jewel and the free-sprung Microstella balance. Hacking seconds arrived across the 1500 family in 1972. No 4-digit Day-Date has a quickset, so both day and date advance only by running the hands through midnight, which distinguishes it from the later five-digit quickset references. There is no 1802-specific caliber; the bezel changes the look of the watch, not the mechanism. The Reference:Movements page holds the caliber lineage, and the 1803 entry covers the 1555-to-1556 transition in detail.

Dial map

The dial range includes early pie-pan profiles, usually silvered or champagne with applied baton markers. The term “doorstep” is used for dials with elongated rectangular markers at six and nine that step in from the outer edge. The label is collector terminology rather than a separate reference.

Lacquered dials are another documented branch. Phillips sold a 1970 yellow-gold example with a black lacquered Stella dial, still accompanied by its punched Attestation de Chronomètre Officiel, and the Stella colours reach the 1802 as they do the other 4-digit references, burgundy and oxblood among the documented examples. Christie's catalogued a platinum 1802 with a turquoise lacquer dial and diamond markers. Age then does its own work: Antiquorum and Phillips both catalogued the same yellow-gold watch with a tropical black "spider" dial, the lacquer crazed into a fine web, and tropical browns turn up across the reference as they do on any black-lacquered Rolex dial of the period. Diamond-set indices appear on gold and platinum examples throughout.

Calendar discs are a separate variation axis. Documented 1802 examples carry several language options. Beyond English, documented examples carry French, Italian, Spanish and Eastern-Arabic day discs, and the Arabic-calendar watches overlap with the Gulf commissions below. The deeper dial taxonomy that spans the whole President line sits on the 1803 entry.

 
A 1970 yellow-gold 1802 with a black lacquered Stella dial and French day disc, on its Jubilee reference 6311, shown with the chronometer attestation that came with it.

Case, bezel, crystal, and crown

The case is the 36mm gold or platinum Oyster shared across the 4-digit Day-Date, with a Twinlock screw-down crown, a screw-down caseback and an acrylic crystal with Cyclops. The bezel is the reference: a plain polished ring, gently domed, with none of the worked surface of its siblings. On a polished-out case that smoothness can be hard to read, which is part of why the reference gets miscatalogued.

That miscataloguing matters because the caseback can mislead. Phillips catalogued one yellow-gold 1802 as "Ref. 1802, stamped 1803 inside the case back" and, three lots later in the same sale, a platinum one as "Ref. 1802, stamped 1804 in the caseback". Two watches, two different sibling references stamped inside, both genuine 1802s. Antiquorum hedges the same problem from the other direction, listing several watches as "Ref. 1802/1803" rather than committing.

The explanation is mundane. The 4-digit Day-Dates share a case, a caseback and a movement, Rolex stamped casebacks in lots that did not track the bezel fitted, and a replacement bezel can change the appearance, so a watch may carry a different bezel from the one fitted at delivery. Attribution rests on the number engraved between the lugs, read against the bezel actually fitted. The caseback stamp dates the caseback lot and nothing more.

Bracelets, end links, and clasps

The 1802 wears the President, with end links stamped 53 and the concealed deployant clasp on documented examples. The Jubilee is not a substitution to be suspicious of on this reference: Phillips catalogued a 1970 yellow-gold 1802 on a Rolex Jubilee reference 6311 with end links stamped 53 and a folding deployant clasp stamped 4.69, all of it signed and consistent with the watch. Rolex supplied the Day-Date on the Jubilee from the originals era onward, and the 1802 is one of the references where that fitment is documented rather than assumed.

The usual caution still applies. A clasp date code dates the bracelet rather than the watch head, and decades of service can leave a later bracelet on an earlier case; the 2004 Christie's sale of a 180x-series example carried a saleroom notice flagging exactly that, an unsigned clasp casting doubt on the bracelet as a whole. The cross-family detail sits on Reference:Bracelets.

Special branches

The Omani Day-Dates

Omani commissions form a documented branch of the reference. Two emblems recur. The first is the signature of Sultan Qaboos bin Said, applied in green on silvered dials; Christie's catalogued a white-gold example with the Qaboos signature, case number 3,795,515, dated to about 1974, and further Qaboos examples in yellow and pink gold. The second is the red Khanjar, the crossed-daggers emblem of the Sultanate.

A well-documented Khanjar example is the one Phillips sold in 2015: a 1975 platinum example, case number 3,856,081 repeated inside the caseback, with a blue dial carrying the red printed Khanjar at six o'clock and round-cut and baguette diamond markers, on a platinum President. Its case is signed Asprey. Phillips describes Asprey as the London retailer through which the Sultan’s early Rolex watches were supplied; that catalog text supports the retailer link, but does not establish that Asprey applied every emblem. Khimji Ramdas is also named on period Gulf Day-Date records. The lot sold for CHF 131,000 in 2015, the highest result in the cited list.

The same commission practice appears on the 1803, 1804 and platinum 1831. The records cited here show that the 1802 was used for both Qaboos and Khanjar dials; they do not establish how its volume compares with other Day-Date references.

Auction record

The listed results show a wide spread by configuration. Plain yellow-gold examples sold for USD 8,925 at Bonhams in April 2023, CHF 9,375 at Antiquorum in November 2019 and CHF 12,500 at Antiquorum in May 2019. These individual results do not establish a general price guide for the smooth bezel.

Omani examples in the listed records reached higher results: the platinum, diamond-set Khanjar sold by Phillips in 2015 brought CHF 131,000, while a second platinum Khanjar at Christie’s in 2023 brought CHF 113,400. Qaboos-signature examples brought USD 44,100 in Dubai in 2022 and CHF 43,750 in Geneva in 2021. These results reflect the documented dial, commission and provenance details of each lot.

Phillips sold a 1970 yellow-gold black-lacquered example on its Jubilee, with the original chronometer attestation, for CHF 43,750 against a CHF 15,000–30,000 estimate. A comparison with a silvered-dial watch is not made here because the records are not matched pairs.

date house configuration result
May 2015 Phillips Geneva, Glamorous Day-Date, lot 10 platinum, diamond-set, blue dial with red Khanjar, Asprey-signed case, 1975 CHF 131,000
Oct 2023 Christie's Geneva, Passion for Time, lot 2206 platinum, diamond-set, pie-pan dial with red Khanjar CHF 113,400
Nov 2021 Christie's Hong Kong, An Exceptional Season of Watches, lot 2315 yellow gold, Spanish calendar disc HKD 125,000
Mar 2022 Christie's Dubai, Watches Online: The Dubai Edit, lot 43 gold, diamond-set, made for Sultan Qaboos USD 44,100
May 2015 Phillips Geneva, Glamorous Day-Date, lot 7 yellow gold, black lacquered Stella dial, Jubilee, 1970 CHF 43,750
Nov 2021 Christie's Geneva, Rare Watches, lot 38 gold, diamond-set, Arabic calendar disc CHF 43,750
May 2019 Antiquorum Geneva, lot 323 yellow gold CHF 12,500
Nov 2019 Antiquorum Geneva, lot 162 yellow gold CHF 9,375
Apr 2023 Bonhams, lot 59 18k gold, white dial USD 8,925
Nov 2023 Christie's Geneva, Rare Watches, lot 71 white gold, Qaboos signature in green, case 3,795,515, c.1974 not sold (est. CHF 30,000–50,000)
Oct 2023 Christie's Dubai, lot 26 yellow gold, Qaboos signature not sold (est. 35,000–55,000)

Phillips ran two further 1802 lots in the same 2015 Glamorous Day-Date sale, in white and yellow gold, and Antiquorum offered two in the 2006 sale of the Mondani collection. Results for those four are not recorded here, and they matter mainly as evidence of how broadly the reference was made across metals.

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    Yellow-gold 1802 with smooth bezel and silvered dial
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    Platinum 1802 with red Khanjar dial, Phillips 2015 lot 10
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    Yellow-gold 1802 with black lacquered Stella dial, Phillips 2015 lot 7

Related references

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

Sources

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