This is the fully loaded version of the watch that made the model famous. Reference 278343RBR is the 31mm Datejust in a combination of stainless steel and yellow gold with a domed bezel set with diamonds, and this configuration pairs a champagne dial and applied index markers with the Jubilee bracelet. Steel and yellow gold, a champagne dial, a five-row bracelet and a set bezel is the specification that a decorated Datejust meant for most of the model's life, and every part of it remains available new and unaltered. Seven grounds are built at this reference and champagne is the only one the catalogue lists both plain and set.
What makes it work rather than merely accumulate is that each element is the conventional version of itself. The Jubilee is native to the model, introduced in 1945 for the original Datejust, and its five links across the width alternate yellow gold center rows with steel outer links. Because yellow gold sits nowhere near steel in color that alternation reads as a clear boundary between two materials rather than as a change in finish, which gives a yellow two-tone Jubilee its particular density of detail. The bracelet carries roughly twice the component count of the Oyster across the same width, so it articulates more finely and follows a wrist more closely, and the gold is solid rather than plated or capped. Rolex matches the polish on the center rows to the polish on the bezel so the metal reads as one material distributed rather than as separate applications of it. The bezel stones are seated individually into recesses cut in the gold, and because yellow gold is visible enough not to be overtaken by them the bezel reads as gold with diamonds in it rather than as diamonds alone. The champagne lacquer is applied in several thin coats to keep the tone even across a curved surface, warm enough to belong to the gold and pale enough to keep the markers legible against it. The applied indexes are yellow gold and faceted, drawn for this case size rather than scaled from a larger one. The date sits at three under the Cyclops lens on a matched disc, its frame polished gold and set level with the surface. The hands are polished yellow gold and drawn for this case size rather than scaled from a larger one, long enough that the minute hand reaches the outer track without overshooting it. Rolex proportions the aperture frame the same way, since a window drawn for a larger dial crowds a smaller one.
The date is the only indication the watch carries beyond the time. The Cyclops lens above the aperture has been part of the Datejust since 1953 and magnifies the date roughly two and a half times, which makes a small window readable without enlarging it and unbalancing the dial. The date changes instantaneously at midnight rather than creeping through the surrounding hour, the feature the model introduced in 1945 and the reason it carries the name it does. Correction runs through the winding crown without advancing the hands, and nothing the watch asks for requires a tool. The movement is self-winding with a power reserve of approximately 55 hours, engineered into a movement built to fit a 31mm case rather than carried down from a larger one, since a smaller barrel stores less energy and a proportionally smaller rotor supplies less of it. The rotor winds in both directions rather than only one, which lets a movement this size keep itself running on the wrist movement of an ordinary day. The crown screws down against the case, and the Jubilee closes with a concealed clasp folded away inside the links. Hand winding runs through the same crown with no separate position to learn, and the watch takes to being worn better than to being rotated.
The Datejust arrived in 1945 as the first self-winding wristwatch to show the date in a window, and the Jubilee was introduced the same year for that watch. The 31mm case sits between the 28mm Lady-Datejust and the 36mm original, and the 278000 generation replaced the 178000 series in 2018 with a revised case and bracelet. Rolex registered the name for its steel and gold construction in 1933. Champagne is among the oldest colors in the range and one of the few that has never left it. Two-tone fell out of favor across the industry through the 2000s and returned over the past decade, and the Datejust carried it continuously rather than dropping and reviving it, which is part of why these references trade as steadily as they do. Within the generation, 278343RBR is the steel and yellow gold reference with a diamond-set domed bezel. The Datejust is also the largest-volume line Rolex makes, and a set two-tone example on a Jubilee sits close to the middle of what that volume has historically been. Champagne is the one ground at this reference that the catalogue lists both plain and set with diamond hour markers. White is plain only, and black mother-of-pearl, dark grey, olive green, silver and white mother-of-pearl are set only, which leaves the unset champagne with a position nothing else here occupies.
The buyer for this wants the complete version and is not interested in editing it. Every configuration on this reference that departs from this one is doing so by substituting something, a different ground or a plainer bezel or a flatter bracelet, and this is the specification all of those are departures from. That makes it the reference point rather than the maximal choice, even though it happens to be both. It is also the more comfortable of the two bracelet options at this size, so the version that looks most complete is again the better-wearing one, and buyers who arrive here usually knew what they wanted before they looked. Nothing else on the reference is quite so unambiguous about what it is. The dial comes on either bracelet, as all seven grounds at this reference do, and three of those grounds are offered in two different marker arrangements, so the plain champagne is among the simpler decisions on offer.
