Politician Giuseppe Conte spotted wearing a Eberhard

Giuseppe Conte, who served as President of the Council of Ministers of Italy from 2018 to 2021, was photographed wearing a vintage rose gold Eberhard Extra-Fort chronograph, reference 14007, dating to approximately the 1950s. The sighting is a reminder that Italian political figures have long gravitated toward understated horological taste — and that a mid-century Swiss chronograph in pink gold communicates something quite different from a contemporary luxury sports watch.

The Eberhard Extra-Fort ref. 14007 belongs to a lineage that the La Chaux-de-Fonds manufacture introduced in the 1930s, positioning the Extra-Fort as its flagship chronograph line. The reference 14007 case in rose gold — a metal fashionable in Switzerland through the 1940s and 1950s before yellow gold reasserted dominance — houses a manually wound movement built on a Valjoux base calibre, but crucially modified and stamped by Eberhard's own workshops. The defining technical feature is the column wheel, or roue à colonnes, which governs the start, stop, and reset functions of the chronograph. Compared to the simpler cam-and-lever system adopted by cost-conscious producers, the column wheel provides cleaner engagement, lighter pushpiece pressure, and greater long-term reliability — qualities that justified the additional finishing time and expense.

For vintage chronograph collectors, the combination of rose gold case and column-wheel movement in a signed Eberhard example represents a genuinely desirable configuration. Eberhard never carried the mainstream name recognition of Rolex or Patek Philippe, which paradoxically kept prices accessible for decades. The market has gradually corrected that undervaluation: clean ref. 14007 examples with original dials and Eberhard-punched movements now attract serious attention at auction, particularly among Italian and French collectors with an appetite for lesser-catalogued references.

Conte studied law at the University of Florence and built a reputation as a composed, detail-oriented figure — qualities that align naturally with the considered choice of a vintage instrument watch over a status symbol. Wearing a 70-year-old rose gold chronograph in a public setting is, in its quiet way, a statement of priorities.

Grey-market pricing for the Eberhard Extra-Fort ref. 14007 in rose gold varies significantly with condition and provenance. Expect well-preserved examples with original dials to trade between $3,500 and $8,000 depending on case integrity and movement state — modest figures relative to the technical and historical substance on offer.