Which luxury pieces actually hold their value?
Short answer
A narrow set of them. The Knight Frank Luxury Investment Index 2026 reports the watch market up 5.1% over twelve months and Hermès Birkin and Kelly bags down only marginally at 0.2% across 2025 — but those are specific icons, not luxury in general. Value retention comes from constrained supply, rising retail prices and condition, not from a logo.
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Start with what the numbers actually cover
The most-cited measure is the Knight Frank Luxury Investment Index, published in The Wealth Report. The 2026 edition, published in April 2026, tracks ten categories — handbags, jewellery, coins, watches, cars, coloured diamonds, furniture, whisky, wine and art — and closed 2025 down 0.4%, which Knight Frank describes as stabilisation after two years of losses. Over the past decade the index has risen 38.6%.
Knight Frank does not price these things itself: the watch figures come from WatchCharts, wine from Liv-ex, handbags from LUXUS, art from ArtTactic and MyArtBroker. That is worth knowing, because it means the index tracks a defined basket of collectable items, not the luxury market as a whole.
What the 2026 index reports
- Watches overall
- Up 5.1% over twelve months, per WatchCharts data in the KFLII 2026.
- Rolex
- The Rolex Market Index up 4.6% over the same period.
- Patek Philippe
- The Patek Philippe Market Index up 12.1%.
- Handbags
- Hermès Birkin and Kelly down 0.2% across 2025 — effectively flat.
- Wine
- The Liv-ex Fine Wine 100 down 2.5% in 2025, for contrast.
- The whole index
- Down 0.4% in 2025; up 38.6% over the decade.
Why some things hold value: the mechanisms
The first is retail price inflation meeting constrained supply. Sotheby's, writing on Chanel's August 2025 price increases of 4 to 7% across most core styles, sets out the mechanism directly: given demand for Chanel bags and the lack of supply in most boutiques, resale prices have risen alongside retail prices. When the new price goes up and the boutique cannot supply you today, the second-hand floor rises with it.
The second is condition. Sotheby's notes in the same piece that resale prices for Chanel are at record levels and pristine bags are in high demand. Value retention is not a property of the model alone — it is a property of a particular example.
The third is structural demand. A 2025 study by Boston Consulting Group with Vestiaire Collective projects the secondhand market growing around 10% annually to as much as $360 billion by 2030, roughly three times the pace of the first-hand market. Bain's 2026 luxury study adds that roughly half of all luxury shoppers now check the secondhand market before buying anything new.
And why most luxury does not
The indices track icons: Birkins and Kellys, Rolex and Patek references with long production runs and deep markets. They are not a claim about handbags or watches generally, and reading them that way is how people talk themselves into overpaying.
A model that ran for two seasons has no established resale price, no depth of comparable listings, and nothing holding a floor under it. That is a fine thing to buy if you want it. It is not the same purchase.
One honest caveat on the demand data: the wardrobe-share and motivation figures in the BCG study come from a survey of Vestiaire Collective's own users — people who already buy resale. Read them as evidence about committed resale buyers, not about everyone.
What to do with this
- Prefer depth of market
- A model with fifteen live comparable listings has a checkable price. One with two does not.
- Pay for condition, not for the story
- The premium sits on pristine examples, and it is the part of the price you can actually verify from photographs.
- Treat completeness as part of the asset
- Box, papers and cards are easier to have than to find later.
- Don't buy it as an investment
- The index moved 0.4% last year. Buy the piece because you want it.
Common questions
Does Nuvinty publish resale values or price indexes?
No. We show individual live listings and the asking price each seller has set. We do not currently publish resale-market statistics — typical prices, ranges, indexes or listing-volume rankings.
Are luxury watches a good investment?
We are not able to give investment advice, and nobody should take any from a shopping site. What can be said factually is that the Knight Frank Luxury Investment Index 2026 reports the watch market up 5.1% over twelve months, and that the index as a whole fell 0.4% in 2025 after two years of losses.
Why do resale prices go up when a brand raises retail prices?
Because the second-hand price competes with the cost of buying new. Sotheby's describes exactly this with Chanel's 2025 increases: with demand high and boutique supply limited, resale prices rose alongside retail ones.
Where this comes from
Every figure and rule above is taken from the sources below. Rules, fees and brand practices change — check the source before you rely on it for a specific purchase.
- Knight Frank — Luxury Investment Index 2026 (The Wealth Report, 23 April 2026) — published 23 April 2026
- Sotheby's — Understanding the 2025 Chanel bag price hikes and the resale market (24 September 2025) — published 24 September 2025
- Boston Consulting Group & Vestiaire Collective — Resale's Next Chapter (9 October 2025) — published 9 October 2025
- Bain & Company — Luxury Goods Worldwide Market Study, spring 2026 update (25 June 2026) — published 25 June 2026
Put it into practice
Buying guides and live listings for the models this applies to most: