What’s the better investment: The S&P 500, gold, or an Hermès Birkin bag?

If you’re looking for a long-term investment, you might want to forget the stock market, skip the gold, and instead, buy yourself a new handbag.

YES!!!

Though not just any bag will do—it’s got to be a Hermès Birkin bag, possibly the most exclusive handbag in the world.

According to Baghunter, an online marketplace for buying and selling high-end bags, the average annual return rate for the Birkin bag actually outpaced that of both the S&P 500 and the price of gold over the last 35 years. Accounting for inflation, the S&P returned an average 8.7% a year, and gold -1.5%—while the resale value of a Birkin in pristine condition rose 14.2%, according to Baghunter’s number crunching.
The bag’s value also showed considerably less volatility than the stock market, Baghunter says, which could be good or bad depending on what type of investment you want. The figures above assume the investor purchased the item or stock and simply held it all those years, without actively trying to maximize profits by moving in and out of investments as the markets moved. In the timeframe examined, the S&P saw a high annual return of 37.2% in 1995 and a low of -36.6% in 2008. The Birkin, on the other hand, fluctuated between a high of 25% and a low of 2.1%, never falling in value. But an investor who timed the market just right could have made more from the S&P.

Baghunter tells Quartz that its figures for the S&P and gold start in December 1980, just before the Birkin’s conception in 1981, when actress Jane Birkin, in a chance encounter on a plane with the then-CEO of Hermès, said the company should offer a bag with pockets.
Evelyn Fox, the founder of Baghunter, which has an obvious stake in promoting the Birkin’s resale potential, told Luxury Daily the findings reflect the stability of the ultra-luxury market. Unlike the stock market and the regular old luxury market, which includes high-end but still relatively accessible goods from brands such as Burberry or Gucci, it fluctuates little, even in difficult economic times.
The comparison between “investing” in a bag and the stock market is somewhat apples-to-oranges, though in some ways that’s because of the very reason the Birkin is so valuable to begin with: The barrier to getting a Birkin is extremely high compared to buying stocks. To start, the average cost of a new Birkin is about $60,000, and they’ve reached as high as $223,000 at auction. Even a Class A share of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. will only set you back $192,000 at present.
One reason for the Birkin’s lofty prices: Scarcity. The bags, a status symbol carried by celebrities from Victoria Beckham to Pharrell Williams, are infamously “sold out” almost constantly. Hermès says the lengthy process required to produce the bags, made of premium animal skins that take time to harvest before being hand-sewn by rigorously trained artisans in France, prevents it from meeting demand. But not everyone accepts that reasoning; there’s a lot of motivation for Hermès to create shortages to keep the bag’s value and prestige high.

Exclusivity also helps keep the Birkin’s value from pitching wildly. You don’t get a lot of people dumping $60,000 bags they waited years to buy and flooding the market. If the bags did go out of fashion, or more were suddenly available, their “investment” value would plummet.

Michael Tonello, author of Bringing Home the Birkin, tells Quartz the Birkin might have been a solid investment five years ago, but not any longer for precisely that reason. Despite the appearance of scarcity, the company has actually been producing far more bags than it used to, he says, and supply is now exceeding demand. He adds that the widely reported waiting lists of up to six years are a myth.
Of course, Baghunter doesn’t necessarily want you to buy new anyway. They would be happy to have you invest in your bag through them.

What’s the better investment: The S&P 500, gold, or an Hermès Birkin bag? – Quartz