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Jewelry Overtakes Classic Cars As a Favorite Luxury Investment

Published

6 years ago

October 13, 2017

INSTORE Staff

Prices have risen 4% over the past year.

Jewelry is now more popular than classic cars as a luxury investment, a new report finds.

Classic cars have dropped to the No. 6 in the Knight Frank Luxury Investment Index, which monitors price growth of 10 luxury investment classes. For several years, such cars had led the pack, but in the year that ended in the second quarter of 2017, their average price rose by only 2 percent, according to Knight Frank.

Jewelry now claims the No. 5 spot in the index, with prices climbing 4 percent over the same period.

Over the past decade, jewelry prices have increased 142 percent, according to Knight Frank.

“While pearls are still the top performer (+282% across the last decade), their growth is starting to level out and more modern jewellery, especially pieces from the Belle Époque/Art Deco era, are starting to set the pace (+93% across the last decade),” the company writes.

Wine landed at No. 1 on the index, with average prices showing a 25 percent increase.

On the whole, the index has climbed 5 percent over the past year.

“Jewelry continues to capture the imagination of wealthy collectors and is a genuine investment of passion,” says Andrew Shirley, who compiled the index, “offering not only great pleasure to its owner, but also, as novelist Barbara Taylor Braford points out in the report, acting as a highly mobile store of wealth.”

The report includes interviews with Taylor on her love of jewelry and with Susan Abeles, head of jewelry, Bonhams US, on jewelry trends.

Click here for the report.

When There’s No Succession Plan, Call Wilkerson

Bob Wesley, owner of Robert C. Wesley Jewelers in Scottsdale, Ariz., was a third-generation jeweler. When it was time to enjoy life on the other side of the counter, he weighed his options. His lease was nearing renewal time and with no succession plan, he decided it was time to call Wilkerson. There was plenty of inventory to sell and at first, says Wesley, he thought he might try to manage a sale himself. But he’s glad he didn’t. “There’s no way I could have done this as well as Wilkerson,” he says. Wilkerson took responsibility for the entire event, with every detail — from advertising to accounting — done, dusted and managed by the Wilkerson team. “It’s the complete package,” he says of the Wilkerson method of helping jewelers to easily go on to the next phase of their lives. “There’s no way any retailer can duplicate what they’ve done.”