...An Italian In San Francisco... Perry's August Rolex GTG

...An Italian In San Francisco...

Perry's August Rolex GTG

Oh What Fun We Had!!!

Last month, I had the distinct pleasure of sharing a great evening with two great pals. My friend John Goldberger, who is one of the top Rolex and horological experts on earth flew into San Francisco, from Italy. I took the photo below of John Goldberger, while he was taking a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge. John Goldberger is as Italian as a man can be and I say that as an absolute compliment. The way he speaks with his Italian accent, the clothes he wears, his passion...all pure Italian!!!

John Goldberger is the author of 100 Superlative Rolex Watches, and he also publishes an amazing iPad Rolex application. John is pictured below holding his book, at dinner. We went to Perry's on Union Street in San Francisco, which is one of my favorite San Francisco restaurants. I have always said, if Rolex was a restaurant, it would be Perry's.

My great Pal and Rolex collector Seth Chandler also joined us, and you see me with Seth in the photo below. Seth is pictured on the left with the orange sweater and I am on the right wearing the red Polo shirt. I usually don't publish photos of myself, but if you were wondering what I look like, now you know ;-)

My pal Seth Chandler is EXTREMELY PASSIONATE about collecting vintage Rolex watches, and I was so excited to introduce him to John Goldberger because I knew they would hit it off and have a great time!!!! and they sure did as seen below. Talking to John Goldberger about Rolex watches would be like talking to Bruce Lee about Karate, or Muhammad Ali about boxing. Super-Ultra engaging and fascinating.

Talking to John Goldberger reminds me of a famous Confucius proverb that says "A single conversation with an extremely wise man is worth more than 10 years of study." John is one of the few people I know who is as PASSIONATE about Rolex as I am ;-)

John Goldberger is pictured above taking a photo of one of Seth's GMT Master Rolex watches, and in the photo below, I took it while John was flicking through his Rolex photo library on his iPad, and I must tell you Seth and I were absolutely in awe watching how fast John could go on his iPad. It was literally like those scenes on the Six Million Dollar man, where Steve Austin runs crazy fast, expect John was just flying through images on his iPad!!!

I have two very interesting pieces of news to share with you that came out of that evening. The first is that John Goldberger may start blogging on Jake's Rolex World and on Jake's Patek Philippe World, which would be pretty amazing.

Secondly, John Goldberger seriously freaked me out when he started showing me some Panerai watches and history on his iPad. Every year, John Goldberger designs and prints a super-high-end calendar that he sends out to all his friends all over the world, and for 2012 he is doing a vintage Panerai Calendar.

So I mentioned John freaked me out, which is not easy to do, but he showed me a piece of Rolex/Panerai history that is previously undocumented and I literally almost fell off my chair. John showed me a copy of the original purchase order receipts from Rolex to Panerai from 1936 and 1937 respectively.

The first Rolex receipt was from Rolex to Panerai for 6 prototypes of the very first Panerai ever made, which is pictured below and it is a Reference 2533. By the way, there are only two known existing examples of this first Panerai, and of course John Goldberger starts his Panerai calendar with this one. If you are not familiar with the original Rolex made Panerai watches, you can learn a great deal about them by checking out my Panerai History article.