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.with retrospectives and reminiscences, Pyszko is celebrating his by looking to the future. After years at the Commonwealth Bank advising on investments, he’s pivoting from high-calibre clients to rare calibres of the mechanical kind.
Not that Pyszko’s own collection runs to an assortment of hundreds; rather, it’s the work of a disciplined connoisseur buying with thought and purpose – as one might expect of an investment banker. “I’ve got 20 watches, and I’ve always had 20. I find that after that [number] I lose touch with my collection. There are watches I buy to keep, others to try something new, a balance that reflects my personality, I think.
As to where his horological obsession began: “I was always fascinated by things mechanical and [by] time … and then, because I was in finance, my salary started moving up. The first I collected seriously was Panerai. Other watches meeting his criteria – “icons of design” – include the aforementioned Audemars Piguet Royal Oak, the Rolex Daytona and
Hope he can spot a fake or a Frankenstein cos there's plenty of them, and they're increasingly good.