{"product_id":"rolex-day-date-18038-factory-onyx-dial","title":"Rolex Day-Date 18038 — Factory Onyx Dial","description":"\u003cp\u003eThere is a moment in the 1980s when Rolex stops treating the Day-Date purely as the chronometer of heads of state and begins to treat it as a canvas. The onyx dial comes from that moment: a slab of hard stone cut thin, black as lacquer yet alive in the way only a mineral can be, set into one of the most recognisable references ever to leave Geneva. This 18038 belongs to that season — yellow gold, fluted bezel, President bracelet — but it is the onyx that decides its character. No two slabs reflect light in the same way.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe watch is a \u003cstrong\u003eRolex Day-Date 36 mm\u003c\/strong\u003e, reference \u003cstrong\u003e18038\u003c\/strong\u003e, with case and President bracelet in 18kt yellow gold, fluted bezel and sapphire crystal. Inside sits the automatic calibre 3055 with quickset, the movement that brought rapid date correction to this generation. The reference stayed in production from the late 1970s until 1988, when the 18238 replaced it. The dial is factory onyx — original Rolex hard stone, not a replacement slab fitted after the fact — and it presents intact, without the hairline fractures that time hands to almost every surface of this kind. The watch is accompanied by its box.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTwo factors combine to make it difficult to find. The first is the dial: hard-stone dials were a niche production even then, reserved for a small fraction of the 18038s that left the manufacture, and onyx is among the most fragile of the materials — a knock, a thermal shock, pressure on the crystal is enough to produce the crack that costs the dial its integrity. An example still intact is the exception rather than the rule. The second is the pairing of origin and condition: the market carries plenty of refinished onyx and of fractured stones offered as original, so an authentic, unblemished factory dial narrows the field to very few genuinely comparable pieces. Set against the wider market for hard-stone Rolex, where the top of the range keeps separating from the rest, this is a Day-Date bought for the rectangle of black stone that the factory no longer fits — and that, intact, is already the hard part.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Collecto Archive","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":58064083714388,"sku":"4175","price":44550.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0975\/9083\/7588\/files\/4175_1.png?v=1793448403","url":"https:\/\/collectoarchive.com\/products\/rolex-day-date-18038-factory-onyx-dial","provider":"Collecto Archive","version":"1.0","type":"link"}