‘Don’t buy the watch – buy the seller’: Massimo Bernardini on carving out a niche in the vintage timepiece market

Massimo Bernardini, better known as Max, has lived more lives than most. Within 10 minutes of entering the Milan dealership that bears his name, which focuses on vintage watches and a few select home décor pieces, Monocle has discovered that the globetrotting polyglot speaks English with an American accent and Spanish with an Argentinean one – and can also converse in Serbo-Croat, thanks to his years at an international school in Belgrade.

After travelling the world with his banker father, Franco, Bernardini moved to Naples at the age of 14. He had been introduced to the world of vintage jewellery by Franco – “a compulsive collector” who, in 1982, left the corporate sector to set up the business that we stand in today. Thanks to his multilingualism, Bernardini landed a job as a translator for Naples-based Argentine football superstar Diego Maradona at the age of 16. “I spent the money that I made by translating on watches,” says Bernardini, leaning back on a chair in his office, a hand-rolled cigarette in his hand. “My first client was Diego,” he adds. “I sold him three Rolex Day-Dates.”

Bernardini took over the family business in 2018. It’s an elegant space: there are cigar holders and vintage glasses, as well as lots of watches in cabinets (the serious ones are locked away in a safe or at the bank). In one corner, resident butler Brandon stands behind a small bar, ready to prepare an espresso or, later in the day, an el presidente (martini with white rum). Max specialises in pre-1990s complicated Patek Philippe and complicated Rolex watches made before 1963, while his staff cover other brands and periods. If you’re a regular collector, you’ll be ushered into his office to examine an intricate watch dial under a microscope.

“Might I introduce you to his royal highness the 1518,” says Bernardini, pulling out a 1940s Patek Philippe. “Very few were sold with a gold bracelet,” he adds, handing the timepiece to Monocle and gently asking us to hold it over his leather-topped desk, so that, if it were to fall, it won’t hit the floor (it later emerges that the watch is worth about €1m). Bernardini says that of the 281 1518s made between 1941 and 1952, he has sold 97 of them.

Though Bernardini now faces competition from the internet, he has built up his client list over three decades, with much of his business coming from the Middle East, Asia and the US. The company includes 10 staff in Milan and a showroom in Hong Kong. He says that he gets “a huge kick” out of rare timepieces and the attention to detail with which they are made. “This watch,” he says, pointing to the €600,000 “Tasti Tondi” Patek Philippe on his own wrist, “doesn’t scream at you. But it’s rare, it’s beautiful and there’s no CNC [computer numerical control]. There was a genius of craftmanship that has been wiped off the face of this planet.”
bernardinimilano.com