The Vintage Rolex world has lost a titan — the great Marcello Pisani has passed away. The legendary Italian collector and veritable encyclopedia of arcane Rolex knowledge made his mark with his unparalleled research into special issue watches such as COMEX and British Military-issued Submariners. His willingness to share what he’d learned with his fellow collectors great and small really set him apart and made him the go-to guy for technical and historic questions, as well as pinpointing those all-important identifiers of authenticity.

I first encountered Marcello about a decade ago as I began my obsession with Vintage Rolex. Through private emails and public interactions on the vital Vintage Rolex Forum I can honestly say that I learned more from Marci than from any other source. More importantly perhaps, I learned what questions should be asked and how to go about researching the puzzles that presented themselves, many of which have now been solved thanks in no small part to M. Pisani. To say he was a mentor to me is a great understatement and yet it’s absolutely a fact that I was but one star in a veritable constellation of questing collectors helped by Marci. So you can multiply his edifying influence on me a thousandfold to get a rough idea as to how many lives he influenced and how much knowledge he shared.

It’s true that in recent years we fell out somewhat, mainly due to our disagreements over the meaning of the appearance of the Underline on Rolex dials circa 1963. If you’ve followed that debate it’s old news by now. But I came to believe, based on a hell of a lot of hard work and research, that the Dutch theory that the Underline was a stand in for Tritium, or at least a signifier for the transition to Tritium luminous material conforming to the T<25 standard, was the correct one. Marci was highly skeptical, said he had been told the real reason by Rolex themselves but then refused to reveal what that reason actually was. So it put him in the unlikely position of Old Testament prophet handing down unquestionable wisdom from on high rather than the true Marcello style of evidence-based arguments. I’m sure his personal affront at my daring to demand that he show the evidence before I would believe his mystery Underline theory made him all the more adamant about keeping it secret. And to be honest, I felt that was pretty poor sportsmanship and not very much like the Marcello I came up admiring so much. In the end, I feel that Rolex was playing Marci and several other key players on the “mystery answer” side of the Underline debate by offering up disinformation on a sensitive topic that “The Lake” would rather leave buried in the past.

No doubt it’s sometimes hard for a teacher to see his students grow past the point at which they were first introduced and accept that with the passage of time the novice may become an expert in his own right. Perhaps that’s how Marcello saw me, as an ungrateful upstart daring to question his wisdom and demand evidence for his assertions. But then it was he who taught me what makes a solid theory in the world of Vintage Rolex — that is to say sample size and preponderance of evidence — so I’m not sure he could really have expected me to react to his mystery answer to the Underline with anything other than a demand for some sort of logical rationale that I feel all such blanket assertions require.

But that contretemps aside, Marcello remains the greatest of Rolex teachers and my greatest teacher personally. And he was not just an expert in Vintage Rolex but also early, military issued Panerai and Royal Navy Omega Seamaster 300s, as well as many, many other horological topics I’m sure. He was also a gourmand and, somewhat idiosyncratically, a huge fan of the great Teutonic synthesizer band Kraftwerk and the extravagant overuse of smileys in his later posts. He was a giant in our hobby and his loss is irreplaceable. I can only imagine the hole he leaves in the lives of his family and loved ones. All of us Rolex collectors send our heartfelt condolences to them in their time of grief. Know that we too feel the loss of this great man. He was one of a kind. He was our Uncle Marci. Yes, he’s gone now but his legacy will live on in the peerless knowledge that he contributed to the demimonde of Vintage Rolex and the countless lives he touched through that milieu. By sharing his immense knowledge with us all so generously he became truly immortal.

Arrivederci, Professore, grazie e buon viaggio.