You can read the books, but nothing beats looking at hundreds of watches, talking to fellow collectors, networking, looking at who the trusted dealers are, seeing things from their perspective. The difference is you’ve owned a lot of the watches yourself. “Through my collecting I bring a different level of experience that cannot be formally taught. The pre-owned watch market is growing at a faster rate than the new market and headed to $US30 billion ($46.2 billion) in annual sales, so he may have got the timing spot on. Swiss-born Pyszko – he came to Australia with his Czech parents in the 1980s – believes his life-long interest in watches uniquely equips him for the career switch. Rene Pyszko admits he is a “fussy” collector: “Some of the vintage pieces I had were close to impeccable, but they still irked me, so I let them go.” Natalie Boog

“I decided to follow my passion,” he tells Fin Magazine from his new workplace, Vintage Watch Co in Sydney’s The Strand Arcade. After years at the Commonwealth Bank advising on investments, he’s pivoting from high-calibre clients to rare calibres of the mechanical kind.

It’s a mark of his enthusiasm for timepieces that career banker Rene Pyszko relishes that his birth date coincides with that of one of his favourite watches, the famed Audemars Piguet Royal Oak.īut if the iconic watch is celebrating its golden anniversary this year with retrospectives and reminiscences, Pyszko is celebrating his by looking to the future.

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