Dial Swap Procedure/Rolex Protocol

[Portofino2023]

Hi Team,

Pondering doing a dial swap on my 25 year old Day Date. Did one 15 years ago with a watch dealer (not RSC) going from Champagne to White Roman Numerals and swapped out the bezel to smooth as the standard issue was eating my French cuff shirts. Have full papers on the watch. Will RSC decline to do work on this watch? Anyone have color on how this works?

Mark

[123Blueface]

They will change out your dial as part of service to any dial you want from the ones that came originally with that reference.
They will keep your old dial.

[miamiclay]

The smooth bezel won’t match the reference number, but so long as both the dial and bezel are genuine factory, I wouldn’t expect problems with RSC. Likely they will only offer a very few standard dials for the replacement, none of the exotic ones. (I wonder if they still have any tritium service dials, or if they are all luminova?)

[Tools]

They used to not even blink when we used authentic, but perhaps not proper, parts on our watches.. Part of the enthusuast protocol.

Now days they seem to be more snippy about such things and may insist that you change your bezel back. Best to get a reading from them before the work begins.

Almost always, on an older watch, they only do the dial swap in conjunction with a full service.