Value of the lapis day date

[miamiclay]

Originally Posted by watchlover135

What do you mean you can order a 6/9 service dial? Rolex service center sells them?

Originally Posted by Incroyable12

If you have a factory DD and send it in for service they can do a dial swap for the 6/9 dial since it's still available.

I’m not certain, but I think the remaining stone service dials at RSC are only available as a “like for like” exchange. E.g., if you have a DD with a damaged lapis dial, they will replace it with a service 6/9 lapis dial, but you can’t buy a lapis to replace any other dial.

I could certainly be wrong (it happens all the time), and in any event it couldn’t hurt to ask RSC!

[offrdmania]

Originally Posted by miamiclay

I’m not certain, but I think the remaining stone service dials at RSC are only available as a “like for like” exchange. E.g., if you have a DD with a damaged lapis dial, they will replace it with a service 6/9 lapis dial, but you can’t buy a lapis to replace any other dial.

I could certainly be wrong (it happens all the time), and in any event it couldn’t hurt to ask RSC!

When I had my 18038, I inquired with Rolex about having the dial replaced with something else. Because my dial was a basic color, they would only allow me to replace it with another basic color like gold, champagne, silver, etc. They said all of the rare stone dials, diamond dials, etc were only available to those who have those dials existing. The inventory was very limited.

[Incroyable12]

Some RSC are a bit more liberal or willing to take risks but generally they will only order dials that would have originally came with the watch. Some RSC also require a full service to swap parts such as the language discs which explains why the Arab and Chinese discs sell for such a high premium on the secondary market. The white Arabic discs for the WG DDs trade for around $2000.

The exotic gemset dials can be ordered but they seem to be more willing to do it for white gold or platinum DDs since those were originally more expensive watches and presumably allowed for more options.

I was told by one of the European RSC that the plain stone dials are now completely unavailable. Apparently the Stockholm RSC was the source of many factory onyx dials for years since they were quite generous with their policies. Many of the YG factory onyx dials floating around for sale now came from the Stockholm RSC. Unsure why the silver print ones are so rare since the WG DD itself isn't a particularly rare watch.

[Modiferous]

Originally Posted by IS2000

My uncle had the plain Lapis dial DD back in the days. He ended up selling it for like $7k back in the 2000’s. I wish I could’ve bought that watch.

Around that time, as I discussed here
https://www.rolexforums.com/showpost...7&postcount=16
many people wanted newer not older, at least for some models.

But it was a good time to pick up mechanical wind older Daytonas, as I did, because their prices were just starting to ramp up. I am talking Year 2000, not much later than that.