Rolex 1807 Day-Date

Day-Date → 1807

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 fully textured 1811. The finish drew few buyers when new. It reads very differently now.

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 (textured incl. case)
predecessor	originals-era 6610 / 6611 / 6612 cluster
successor	5-digit 18078, which carries the bark finish forward

Where it sits in the line

The 1807 is one of the 1803's decorated siblings. The 4-digit Day-Date split by finish rather than by movement or size. The 1803 took the fluted bezel, the 1804 a gem-set bezel, the 1806 the finer Florentine engine-turning, and the 1807 the coarser bark; the 1811 ran the texture across the case as well. Most sources separate the 1806 and 1807 by that texture, Florentine against bark, though BezelBase's own 1803 entry groups the textured references slightly differently and reads the 1806 as a bark-bezel reference. What is not in dispute is the 1807 itself: the bark covers both the bezel and the bracelet center links.

Everything else is 1803. The 36mm gold case, the President bracelet, the caliber 1555 and 1556 movements, and the dial catalogue are shared, and the bark is the only thing that makes an 1807 an 1807. 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, and the texture sold slowly when new, so the bark and Florentine references are scarcer in the record than the fluted 1803 for the simple reason that fewer buyers chose them. Documented examples cover the span: silver- and champagne-dialled yellow-gold pieces in the mid-1960s on the caliber 1555, later examples into the early 1970s on the hacking caliber 1556. The finish outlived the reference and reappeared in the 5-digit era on the 18078.

Movement notes

The 1807 uses the movement of the rest of the 4-digit Day-Date: caliber 1555 from the start of the run, replaced by the caliber 1556 around 1965. The 1556 raised the beat to 19,800 vph and brought the free-sprung Microstella balance; hacking seconds arrived across the 1500 family 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 most common, 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 read against the gold bark. The dial does not define the reference. The bark does, and the 1803 entry carries the dial-variant taxonomy that applies across the group.

Case, bezel, crystal, and crown

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 the length of the bracelet rather than stopping at the bezel. That full-length bark is what separates the 1807 from a watch that simply has a textured bezel. As with any vintage President, a clasp date code dates the bracelet rather than the watch 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 1811, which extends the texture onto the case flanks. These were a 1960s fashion, and Rolex let them go as taste returned to polished and fluted gold. Survivors are comparatively scarce and now wanted precisely because the texture is unusual. The bark itself outlasted the 4-digit era and returned on the 5-digit 18078.

Auction record

Bark 1807s surface mainly through the dealer market rather than the major auction houses, which reflects the reference's modest standing rather than any great rarity. Documented yellow-gold examples run from mid-1960s silver-dial pieces to early-1970s examples on the hacking caliber 1556. The value driver is an original bark bracelet: decades of service often swapped bark center links for plain ones, so a watch that keeps its full original bark is worth more than the dial alone would suggest.

Sources