Davide Parmegiani origin story begins with a flea market stall in Milan selling watches for under 200,000 Italian lira (around €100) and today sees him running a prestigious boutique in Switzerland on Lugano’s luxurious Via Nassa along with the Monaco Legend Group auction house for art, classic cars and watches, which he opened in 2019. His first love remains vintage watches, and he considers himself a super-collector first and an entrepreneur second as Simon de Burton describes.
There are plenty of collectors who can reel-off lists of the impressive watches they have owned, but I doubt there are many who can cause a horophile’s jaw to drop quite as readily as Davide Parmegiani — especially when he reveals (in a matter-of-fact way) that he has owned four Patek Philippe Reference 1518 perpetual calendar chronographs in stainless steel.
As any vintage Patek fan will tell you, only four steel examples of the vintage, perpetual calendar chronograph were ever made – and the last to appear at auction (in 2016) fetched CHF 11 million. Enough said?
Not really, because the most remarkable thing about Parmegiani is that he’s not one of the many from the baby boomer generation who landed themselves a pile of money and then set out to accrue all the ‘right’ things.
Instead, he is someone for whom buying and selling watches might have been marked-out in the stars – for him, it’s a vocation.
Born in 1966, he grew-up in Milan where his father ran a small shop selling antique jewellery. The business took him far and wide on buying trips, and his young son often went with him. “That’s where my passion came from – travelling around the world with my father, visiting shops, salerooms and flea markets and sifting through boxes of old stuff,” Mr Parmegiani told WATCHPRO.
“I had already been collecting for a while by the time I was a teenager, initially inexpensive Timex digitals, Porsche Design models and military pieces, all of which were very cheap in the early ‘80s. At Portobello market, I would pick up CWCs and LeManias for £50 or £100 each – sometimes there would even be a British Army Rolex Submariner on offer. Although they might be as much as £500.”
But, says Mr Parmegeani, his first really good buys were an 18 carat gold Rolex Bubble back that his father had found among a box of jewelry in an estate clear-out, and a GMT-Master bought in Milan for the equivalent of $300.
“When I was 17 or 18, I would go to my father’s shop after finishing my day’s studying and put whatever pieces I had into a small space in the window that he had allowed me to take over. I remember pricing the GMT-Master at $500 – and then having to wait for three or four months before a buyer came along.”
In 1987, Mr Parmegiani’s wheeler-dealing had to be cut short due to Italy’s then requirement for a year’s national service – and when he came out, he recalls, interest in watches had ramped-up considerably.
“I would say it was a completely different world,” he says. “The market had begun to explode while I was away and everyone seemed to be hungry for vintage watches. My father said I should follow him into the jewelry business because the popularity of watch collecting would never last – but, while I had some interest in diamonds and colored stones, I didn’t have the same passion for the subject.”
So, contrary to his father’ advice, Mr Parmegiani struck-out on his own with a small stall in a Milan flea market where he enjoyed moderate success – but nothing compared with what was to come.
“A friend saw what I was doing and suggested that, if I really wanted to be a watch dealer, I should go to America. And there I discovered the biggest source of vintage watches in the world and joined the IWJG (International Watch and Jewellery Guild) as member number 531.” (There are now 8,200 members from 75 countries).
As a result of visiting the US, Mr Parmegiani got to know some of the world’s most prominent dealers and collectors, laying the foundations of a network that, more than 30 years later, is probably second to none.
“It was at the beginning of the 1990s that the really wealthy entrepreneurs began to emerge, people in their early 50s who had earned a great deal of money and wanted to spend big on watches, art and cars – and I was there to help them. I had collectors asking me for Vacheron Constantin, others asking for Rolex, others for Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet. It was a very exciting time.”
It was in 1990, too, that Mr Parmegiani opened his first watch store, Passatempo in Milan, followed by another, ORO, a decade later – shortly after which he moved his family to the genteel Swiss city of Lugano where he still operates the eponymous watch store on via Nassa that he established in 2013.
Along the way, he has accumulated a truly staggering private collection that he estimates at more than 1,000 watches – among which are no fewer than 111 Rolex Cosmographs.
“My father once said to me that I would end up like the typical antique furniture dealer who starts out with $1,000 and one chair and, 30 years later, ends up with $1,000 and 100 chairs – and he was right. That is exactly what has happened.
“My dealer mentality means everything has a price, so I could sell any piece from my collection, just as I always have done. But in the case of the really special pieces, that’s ok because I usually know exactly where they are – of the four steel 1518s I have owned and sold, for example, three went to people who remain my very good friends.”
And almost as remarkable as his involvement with those watches is the story surrounding Mr Parmegiani’s connections with the famous, 1946 Patek Philippe Reference 1415 HU ‘world time’ in platinum that was sold by Antiquorum 20 years ago for CHF 6.6m — a record wrist watch price that stood for 14 years.
“I was involved when the watch sold at Sotheby’s New York more than a decade earlier. The person who bought it was a very keen Cartier collector and, in around 1992 or 1993, he asked me to broker a deal whereby he would exchange it for a very rare, round Cartier with an enamel dial. At the time, both watches were worth around $300,000, so everyone was happy.
“The 1415 went to a collector from Milan who decided to sell in 2001. So we consigned it to Antiquorum and, I have to say, we were surprised when it reached such a huge price.” (The watch sold again at Christie’s in May last year – for the equivalent of ‘only’ US$1.9m).
But it’s not only mega-money watches that Mr Parmegiani is interested in – he loves them all. “The market for Rolex, Patek, Audemars and now Cartier is very strong – but I really like many other makes that, to me, remain undervalued.
“Heuers from the 1970s are, I think, still inexpensive; as are Omegas other than the usual Speedmaster – the Speedmaster MKII, for example, the Seamaster 300 and the PloProf. Then there are some very nice 1970s Tudor chronographs that can still be bought for very little, the same with some Breitlings of the same era. If you look at the quality, the design and the rarity, they have to be destined to rise in value.”
And when Mr Parmegiani isn’t buying, selling and collecting watches, he’s writing books about them – a new volume about Patek Philippe’s bespoke creations is in the works – and devoting an increasing amount of time to his latest venture, the Monaco Legends auction house.
“I opened the Monaco Legend Group in 2019 with my friend and business partner Claude Cohen and it has given me another outlet for my three main interests: watches, cars and art.”
As this issue went to press, Mr Parmegiani was busy fielding enquiries about the seventh and latest sale, a 273-lot affair packed with interesting pieces with estimates ranging from as little as Euros 2,000 to more than Euros 500,000.
Helping him out was his 23-year-old son, Andrea – who, to Mr Parmegiani’s obvious delight, has inherited his father’s passion for horology. And what’s the betting that he’ll have some remarkable watch stories of his own to tell in 30 years’ time.