Rolex diamond bezel authentication and history

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Note: Some photos in this article are borrowed credit to the original photographers.

1800 series:

Men’s diamond bezels are easily identified as original if you understand a few technical aspects of the bezels design and have a good knowledge of what was correct and available historically. Let’s begin with the 1800 series of Rolex men’s presidents. Technically the only models in this series to have a diamond bezel installed at the Rolex factory is the model 1804. The 1805 had a combo, diamond and sapphire bezel. However, Rolex AD could sell diamond bezels separately at the time to anyone with a president from that series 1800-1811 and were encouraged to sell upgrades by Rolex. Many with a standard 1803 fluted bezel president went to an AD and bought a diamond bezel for their 1803. These were factory Rolex parts and genuine, however to a collector an 1804 is much more prized than an altered 1803. The 1805 bezel was never for individual sale at AD and therefore you rarely see them on any other watch other than what it was made for an 1805, like today if you had a problem with your 1805 bezel you had to send the watch to Rolex and they would verify you have the correct case reference for that bezel replacement.

The first diamond bezels were made in white gold. A white gold bezel was paired with a yellow gold case, odd I know, see borrowed photos, and credit to the original photographers. It is not to my taste really and I suspect many others also feel the same way. This caused a bit of a cross over when the 18000 series came onto the market, I will explain later.

Visual inspection.

1800 men’s president series = 46 brilliant set , set in white gold, no identification marks on the back if removed indicating gold purity or the marks showing it as being a Rolex product, no codes or letters seen.