The luxury resale market has seen a massive boom in the past few years, with companies like Vestiare Collective and Xupes asserting that the Hermès Birkin bag retains around 130% of its retail value at resale. The reasoning behind this? Scarcity. It’s widely known you can’t just stroll into any Hermès shop and expect one of the pristine shop assistants to lift the red ropes and present you with a with a selection of Birkin bags to choose from. As Vestiare co-founder Fanny Moizant succinctly puts it, “Anything that is hard to get is highly coveted, and there’s a mystery around the bags, which makes them even more sought-after.”
On 12 June 2019, Christie’s London hosted a handbag auction featuring some of the world’s most exotic finds, including an Hermès Birkin bag that sold for an unbelievable £162,500. This was second most expensive handbag ever sold at auction—the record was broken in 2018 when the Matte Himalaya Niloticus Crocodile Birkin 35 with 18k White Gold & Diamond Hardware went for a colossal £236,750. One has to wonder—when would a person wear a six-figure handbag? Certainly not when their personal security take their annual leave.
