Most people I know of who buy luxury watches or handbags say they’re a good store of value and can fetch a high resale price in the future. If the market mostly consists of people who buy them for the sole purpose of reselling, wouldn’t that make it a purely speculatively priced item, akin to crypto? How has the luxury market not collapsed?
In: Economics
This is mainly a justification people use for THEMSELVES, to mentally justify why it was OK to spend so much on an item. It’s 99% cope.
The reality is that the re-sale market on these items is NOT that strong. I mean yes, compared to a non-designer bag, they DO retain some re-sale value. As in, a 2 yr old Birkin still retains some value, whereas a 2 yr old purse from Target will have none. But they are by no means a “good store of value” compared to pretty much anything else. You will, at best, get a small fraction of the purchase price back on a re-sale. It’s kind of like the diamond/jewelry market… you’ll never get back anything near what you spent.
Then there is also the fact that high-end/designer fashion is its very nature trend-based. Sure there are a few “classic” looks that are somewhat timeless, but in general part of what makes popular fashion popular is that its popular. And these trends change over time, sometimes from season to season. If someone DID need to tap into their “designer purse inventory” to make a little cash, they will likely find the purse that was the “cool trendy popular” bag 4 years ago now looks dated. And instead of signaling to the world
>I am current and trendy and have my finger on the pulse of the current style, and am successful enough to afford the latest
it signals
>I am behind the curve fashion-wise and/or cannot afford the currently-popular thing
Which is basically the opposite of what people are going for when they buy high-end designer fashion. So this further hurts the re-sale value.
So in short: no, these things are not good “stores of value”. People saying that are usually just huffing some high-grade copium to justify their own purchases to themselves.
Latest Answers