Rolex Day-Date in an auction - is this fake?

Hi to all! First time for me posting on Rolex side of the forums, but I could really use help figuring out the real nature of this assumed Rolex Day-Date.

I found it being auctioned as part of a vast death estate listing among huge pile (8 kg) of other jewellery, watches and military medals/honors etc. Seems to be former belongings of a serious collector. Items are not especially listed or described, there are just photos of most of things, this watch has maybe most photos of all. Too bad they are of low quality but here they are:
I have only now for about one week tried to figure out what this should look like and what is potentially off with it. Here is the bad:

1. First thing I noticed is that at least the hands have lume and maybe there is lume at the ends of the indices, hard to tell from the blurry picture. The clasp part number 8385 would indicate the watch being 36 mm ref. 18038 or 18238. The former was produced from 1978-1988 so it should have tritium lume and t's marked on the dial accordingly. The latter was produced until 2000 so maybe the very latest models (1998-2000) of ref. 18238 would not have t's for Rolex changed to Luminova in 1998?

2. Dial has also another problem. The minute track has narrow boxes with numerals that I have seen only combined with diamond indices. This has batons. Is this fake or possible redial?

3. The clasp has two obvious problems. At the end of the clasp where the first fixed/solid link is connected to the clasp "plate", (marked on the picture with the scale) it seems to be built from three parts: clasp plate, mid section and a link. To my understanding this should be just one solid part?

Other problem is that at the other end of the clasp the first link has the hinge visible (marked on the picture with the scale). This should be hidden inside the link right?

4. The end links are not of correct shape on the inside being flat and too thin-looking, what is the verdict here?

Then the good?:

5. Weight of the watch could be a positive. I saw mentioned in a video of a ref. 18038 the weight being 115 g.

6. The marking "R" on the other leg was a difficult one. I managed to find one discussion with a picture of another example. This gave me positive feeling, because I found that one exists and I thought why would a forger take the time to make such a suspect marking which can't be found usually. Any idea on this one?

I'm pretty sure all the problems I have found are indicating that the watch is fake, but I would love to have your opinion on the watch to be sure and to learn what is what on the Rolex side of things. Thank you in advance for any contribution!

Actually figured out something for the 1. problem about the no t's in the dial: for the watch to have been produced 1998-2000 to have Luminova, the gold hallmark should be st bernards (since 1995) but this has what resembles the Head of Helvetia. This means that the dial should absolutely have tritium marked on the dial. Could of course mean that the bracelet or the clasp is from different period.

This scenario came to mind but it is actually not auctioned by a auction house but in an online auction by a private trader whose main business is listed as cleaning services in a very small town in a rural area. Maybe he landed the commission by cleaning the house of the deceased, i don't know. But everything else in the lot seems very authentic, gold jewellery with papers and proper markings, the war medals are authenticated, there are other watches like a gold Certina and a gold Tissot. There is also a bag full of watches without any description but there seems to be a Cartier watch in there along with pocket watches and such. Listing shows auction listing booklets from as far as early 90's and everything seems like a real collection, unless the person was collecting fakes. I'm thinking maybe they have no idea what they are doing and just sell the whole lot. That's why I didn't want to just disregard the possibility that even though the listing is horribly done there are authentic valuable objects there and maybe take a gamble with it - unless this Day-Date is obviously a total fake.

I was hoping to have any comment on authencity issues I raised from the agreed very bad pictures. I tried to do proper research but still am not 100% sure as I am not familiar with Rolex watches. Is the bad picture quality in the listing enough to call it fake? Or are the issues I picked up from the pictures valid? Or is it so obvious to everyone else but me and I should draw a conclusion from the no-comments?

I am very much a beginner and would appreciate a lot if anyone could just sincerely tell me if the object in the pictures is absolutely fake and I shouldn't waste my time on it. Otherwise I might take part in the bidding tomorrow when the auction ends just to get a closer look.

I see the sarcasm but I will let you know 🙄

Thank you for your input, I appreciate it. Yeah, it doesn't show any of the smaller hallmarks on the lugs, but every day-date that I have looked at during this week does have the 18k stamp also. This just seems a bit thick that would indicate fake..

This is exactly what I'm thinking. Who knows what is the backround and situation of the estate. Especially if the watches are not working and there are a lot of them and they are in a hurry for any reason.

The fascination is of course greed, opportunism and the thrill of the hunt for a steal. Also a great motivation and opportunity to study iconic watch model to gain knowlegde for the future. I have during this week learned a lot about day-date history, refences, how to combine information of production years with lume materials and swiss hallmarks and also to train my eyes for details like hinges and such to help me spot a fake if I ever need to. I am also greedy for information and knowledge is power. Maybe it is gullable to think there might be a steal here but I think I already won by gaining all the information I have.

By the way the lot (it has a lot of other stuff besides this) is at 6k € with 10h to go. And usually the real bidders come in at the last minute. So the whole thing is also entertaining to see unfold even if decide not to take part in it :🍿:

So the auction just ended. Someone bought the lot at 12k € 😅. That makes no sense to me, but they were really going at it for a while.

I would've been comfortable to bid 9k just to take a look. On this site there is a 14 day cancellation policy for private individuals, starting from receiving the item, so it would've been possible. If it comes back to sale in the next 28 days, it is a pretty good confirmation that the watch was fake. If someone bought it as a business, they took a horrible risk in my opinion.

12 K would’ve been a horrible risk, but you would’ve thrown 9K at the same piece even with all the uncertainty?

Yes, with the 14 day cancellation policy to take a look. No risk at all..