Inside the Watch Collection of ‘Mr Rolex’ AKA Giuseppe Carli

Occasionally, you come across something – or someone – in the watchmaking world that is a true hidden gem. One of those people is Giuseppe Carli (AKA Mr. Rolex) the scion of a renowned family of Italian jewellers who first opened shop in 1665, in the beautiful city of Lucca, Tuscany.

Lucca itself is a place that is still slightly off the beaten trail, without the fame of Pisa and its leaning tower, Florence and its illustrious painters, or Chianti and its world-leading wines. But this delightful medieval city – which in fact has the longest network of preserved Renaissance wall fortifications in Europe, surrounding the city for four uninterrupted kilometres – is full of charming secrets. And one of them is what, in my experience at least, adds up to the most incredible collection of watches ever seen.

Although Giuseppe still runs the family jewellery business, the irony is that the vast majority of the watches kept within the shop aren’t for sale: they form part of his cherished private collection, which is so extensive that he doesn’t even know how many are in it. But it’s safe to say that we’re talking in the high hundreds. Maybe more.

All sorts of famous collectors have called the shop – from football players such as Karl-Heinz Rummenigge to A-list actors like Harrison Ford – but very rarely does anything get sold that tells the time. You’re welcome to buy jewellery though, as Giuseppe doesn’t care so much about that on a personal level.

“Quite a long time ago, I sold a beautiful watch from the 1940s to a lady who brought it back to me several years later in terrible condition,” remembers Giuseppe. “That was such a painful experience that I said I would never do it again.”

These much-loved watches range from limited-edition Patek Philippe pocket watches from the 1920s, to an unrivalled array of Rolexes – one watch roll is filled just with Milsubs alone – and enough military watches to equip a small army. Not to mention Tudor, Breitling, Cartier, Omega, Vacheron, Longines, Heuer – plus other names that are far more obscure.

The Carli collection comprises a wide range of brands and styles, including his latest eclectic arrival: a small rectangular Rolex driving watch from 1936 that is worn on the side of the wrist, which made it easy to tell the time while grasping onto a giant vintage steering wheel. A bit like the Marvin “Motorist” watch from a slightly later era, which Giuseppe also owned, and we had fun trying on. To be honest I’d never even heard of such a Rolex before, but there’s no shame in that as neither had Giuseppe until it was offered to him – and if Giuseppe hasn’t heard of a Rolex, chances are that it doesn’t exist.

Now in his 60s, Giuseppe is an energetic walking encyclopaedia of not just Rolex, but most other brands too – I’d never met anyone who knows more about Longines, for example.

His beautiful office, where the precious collection is housed within a bank-grade safe, contains wall to wall shelving that also accommodates all the most famous books ever written on watchmaking. He’s read them all. Not only that, but he knows how to reference more or less any passage in them, darting from desk to shelf like some form of human search engine until he finds the exact page he is looking for.

“There was actually a Rolex driving watch similar to my latest one that I saw once,” he says, deftly identifying a photo in a catalogue. “But as you can see, it’s not exactly the same.” And he then points out exactly how it’s different, with an eloquence and enthusiasm that makes the book entirely superfluous. “So, I couldn’t believe it when I found this one.”

The very first watch that Giuseppe Carli owned himself was a Universal Geneve Chronograph from the 1950s, and from there, as he readily admits:

The collecting bug had well and truly bitten, aided and abetted by his father Pietro, who himself was a great collector of watches and responsible for many of the pieces in the current collection. Pietro died five years ago in his 90s, meaning that Giuseppe is now the 13 ^th -generation jeweller in charge of the Carli business. Not just that, but Pietro also collected all sorts of accessories and decorations to help display his watches, and this love of curating and featuring a collection has definitely been passed down from father to son.

Pietro, an Anglophile, was a great lover of travel and aviation: his carefully archived portfolio of British Airways Executive Club cards is displayed alongside one of many GMT Masters as well as all sorts of other travel memorabilia. The same applies to cars and car models. Look around Carli’s mesmerising office, tucked away discreetly in the back of the shop, and you’ll see a row of cabinets that are like dioramas of watches in the wild.

You’ll see a model Lamborghini next to a collection of Heuer in-car stopwatches, originally used for rallies and road races, while a model Alfa Romeo that looks like it just completed the Mille Miglia – a legendary 1000-mile race across Italy – is artfully displayed next to (of course) a Chopard Mille Miglia watch. Not to mention maps, manuals, and even contemporary board games. It's a Disneyworld of watches that you could literally spend hours in.

There’s even a Rolex area with watchmaking tools salvaged from the factory, not to mention all sorts of other quirky watches – such as the Giroxa Everlight, which was the first watch with an illuminated dial lit up by a small bulb, which you switch on by pressing a button at the side of the case. This is exactly the sort of thing that Giuseppe loves to collect; stuff that is fun and different.

It's in fact a Rolex GMT Master that is probably the pride of Giuseppe’s collection, although he has to think a bit about which one is his specific favourite: he has many. There are a couple of rolls of Daytonas too. When pushed, he picks a ‘one of one’ brown and cream GMT Master, the likes of which will never be seen again. The root beer, brown dial variant is rare enough, but this incredible brown bezel with a cream dial version is hen’s teeth territory.

“This one I think is my favourite,” he says plucking it out of its plush red box. Just because it’s so unique. I’ve had it for a long time and felt a connection with it straight away. Here, try it on…”

Despite the fact that these watches are now all incredibly valuable – even more valuable than the gorgeous medieval building they are housed in, at the heart of Lucca’s city centre – Giuseppe treats them all with an endearing casualness, pulling them all out onto his desk cheek by jowl, and stuffing them wherever there is space, Rolex piled upon Breitling as his enthusiasm takes over. “You’ve got to see this,” he’ll often say, and yet another incredible box makes an appearance, such as an original Rolex Deepsea.

Every watch is loved and respected, but none of them are wrapped in cotton wool. Each watch is worn too; but with so many watches in the collection, Giuseppe’s rotation is a frequent one. And he wouldn’t have it any other way. If they pick up a few scratches as they live their lives, so what?

A lot of that healthy attitude comes from the environment in which he grew up, when watches weren’t as valuable as they are now. “When I started collecting vintage watches, it wasn’t even an established thing,” he says. “It was actually quite an accessible thing to do, as nobody really wanted them.”

Ironically, he didn’t either – at least in the early days. “When I was younger, I wasn’t so much into watches at first, even though I was surrounded by them,” remembers Giuseppe. “But then I started appreciating them more, as the only sort of ‘jewellery’ that men can wear. And after that I really started to think about the mechanical element too, so I loved them even more. It was definitely a passion that grew over time – which is appropriate enough when we’re talking about watches, isn’t it? I guess with my family, it was inevitable.”

But at the time the Carli family were pioneers; it’s easy to forget that watch collectors back then were in a very nerdy minority – which meant that prices were not at all what we know now. Pietro bought so many of those MilSubs from British military surplus auctions, where they were sold off cheaply as there was no proper demand for them. He often bought up entire lots of them at a time, for about £200 each back then – and even the one-off GMT Master that Giuseppe treasures was bought in the 1990s for less than £10,000.

The way that all these watches have shot up in value surprises Giuseppe, but doesn't necessarily interest him, as none of these watches are ever going on sale – even though he’s had several money-no-object offers. But he still thinks that watches are a worthwhile investment even now.

There are very few people in this world who have as much enthusiasm for watches as Giuseppe Carli: a man whose family dynasty, Aladdin’s Cave of incredible watches, and love of unique vintage pieces mean that he is genuinely frozen in time.