Rolex Day-Date 18248

Day-Date → 18248

The 18248 is the bark-finish Day-Date of the caliber-3155 era, the double-quickset successor to the caliber-3055 bark 18078. It is a yellow-gold President whose bezel and bracelet centre links carry the coarse vertical "bark" texture, écorce in French, now with the caliber 3155 that finally let an owner set both the day and the date from the crown. It ran from 1988 to about 2000. A common listing error files the 18248 as a diamond-bezel reference; its factory finish is bark, and the diamond-bezel Day-Date of this generation is the 18348. Like the 18078 before it, the 18248 is collected as a textured case paired with an exotic dial.

Core facts

detail	value
reference	18248
family	Day-Date
production	1988 to about 2000
movement	caliber 3155, 31 jewels, 28,800 vph, double quickset (day and date), ~48h, COSC
case	36mm 18k yellow gold President
crystal	sapphire
bezel	bark (écorce) finish
bracelet	President 8385 with bark-finished centre links, hidden Crownclasp, solid links
lume	tritium ("T SWISS MADE T") for most of the run, Luminova near 2000
dial	champagne and silver stick; ferrite/meteorite, dégradé Stella, onyx and hardstone, Roman, diamond-set
crown	Twinlock screw-down
siblings	18238 (fluted), 18239 (white-gold fluted), 18249 (white-gold bark), 18348 (diamond bezel), 18346 (platinum diamond)
predecessor	18078 (caliber-3055 bark)
successor	caliber-3155 carryover into the 6-digit era (scarce)

Where it sits in the line

The 18248 is the bark member of the caliber-3155 Day-Date generation, the textured sibling of the fluted 18238. The generation splits by finish the way the caliber-3055 references did before it: the 18238 is the fluted volume reference, the 18348 carries the factory diamond bezel, and the bark follows in yellow gold as the 18248 and in white gold as the 18249. The 18248 is routinely mislabelled as a diamond-bezel watch in the market, but the digit denotes the bark finish, and the diamonds on a genuine 18248 sit in the dial rather than on the bezel. Everything behind the finish is 18238: the same 36mm case, caliber 3155, sapphire crystal and President bracelet. The bark is the same coarse écorce the 18078 introduced in the previous generation; what changed is the movement underneath.

Production outline

The 18248 ran from 1988, when the caliber 3155 replaced the 3055 across the Day-Date line, until about 2000, when the 6-digit references took over. The bark remained a low-volume niche finish, made in far smaller numbers than the fluted 18238, which is why it surfaces so rarely. Across the run the only running change of note is the lume: early examples carry tritium, marked "T SWISS MADE T" at the foot of the dial, while the latest examples near the 2000 handover switch to Luminova. No quartz, no case change, no movement change inside the reference; the 18248 is a stable, single-spec watch whose variety lives entirely in the dial.

Movement notes

The 18248 runs the caliber 3155, the double-quickset Day-Date movement: 31 jewels, 28,800 vph, a roughly 48-hour reserve and COSC certification, with both the day and the date set from the crown. That double quickset is the substantive advance over the 18078, whose caliber 3055 quicksets only the date and leaves the day to be advanced by running the hands. The 3155 is the long-serving modern Day-Date movement, carried unchanged from the fluted 18238 into the 6-digit 118238 that followed. The Reference:Movements page holds the caliber lineage, and the 18238 entry covers the 3155 in detail.

Dial map

The bark is the constant on the 18248; the dial is where the variety lives, and the most collected examples pair the textured case with a dial idiom of the 1990s. The common configuration is a champagne or silvered stick dial. Beyond that the reference is associated with the ferrite or "meteorite" dials, blue-grey textured grounds that suit the organic bark, blue dégradé Stella dials with diamond markers, glossy onyx and hardstone dials with diamond-set Arabic numerals at six and nine, and the occasional wood-effect dial with a Chinese calendar for the Asian market. Roman-numeral and diamond-set dials round out the range. The deep dial taxonomy that spans the President line sits on the 1803 entry; on the 18248, as on the 18078, the dial is the identity of the individual watch.

Case, bezel, crystal, and crown

The case is the 36mm yellow-gold Oyster shared across the caliber-3155 Day-Date, with a sapphire crystal and Cyclops, a Twinlock screw-down crown and a screw-down caseback, here stamped with the 18200 case-family number on the inside. The defining feature is the bark finish, the coarse vertical woodgrain worked into the bezel, identical to the texture the 18078 introduced. The case flanks and lugs stay polished, so the bark reads as a deliberate band around the dial. It is the same finish the 18078 carried; the 18248 differs by its movement and its later production, not by its surface.

Bracelets, end links, and clasps

The 18248 wears the President bracelet, reference 8385, with the concealed Crownclasp and the solid links of the 5-digit era, and the bark carries onto the bracelet's centre links so the texture runs from the bezel down the length of the bracelet. A bark 18248 that keeps its original bark centre links rather than service-replaced plain ones is the complete expression of the reference. As with any President, a clasp date code dates the bracelet rather than the head, and the cross-family detail sits on Reference:Bracelets.

Special branches

Bark with an exotic dial

The bark 18248 is collected as a case-and-dial pairing, the same way the 18078 is. The ferrite and meteorite-effect dials are the signature of the caliber-3155 era, where the wood and burl dials had defined the 18078. Blue dégradé Stella dials with diamond markers, diamond-set onyx dials with Arabic numerals, and wood-effect Chinese-calendar dials all appear on the bark case. On a reference this scarce, the dial is what separates one 18248 from the next and what sets the result.

Auction record

The 18248 is thinly represented at the major houses, and where it appears the dial drives the lot rather than the bark head itself. Christie's sold a ferrite wood-effect example with a Chinese calendar in Hong Kong in 2024 for HKD 214,200, the strongest documented result for the reference. Phillips catalogued a ferrite Roman-dial example in Geneva in 2023, and Sotheby's has handled both diamond-set onyx and blue dégradé Stella examples across recent sales, with a blue-Stella example selling in Geneva in 2017 for CHF 12,500. A plain champagne or silver bark 18248 sits at a more modest level, roughly the low-to-mid five figures in dollars, trading on condition and full set rather than on the bezel; the special dials are what reach the upper end.

date	house	configuration	result
2024	Christie's Hong Kong, lot 2337	ferrite wood-effect dial, Chinese calendar	HKD 214,200
2023	Phillips Geneva XVII, lot 148	ferrite Roman dial	published lot reference
2022	Sotheby's Cologne	diamond-set onyx dial, Arabic 6/9	published lot reference
2020	Sotheby's Hong Kong, lot 103	blue dégradé Stella diamond dial	published lot reference
2017	Sotheby's Geneva, lot 317	blue Stella dial	CHF 12,500

Sources