Jakarta Composite Index Falls: Is Investing in a Hermès Bag Really More Profitable?
Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia - The Jakarta Composite Index (IHSG) closed lower on Wednesday (13/5/2026). As stock prices fall, investors are starting to look at alternative investment instruments, one of which is luxury bags from the Hermès brand. Is it really more profitable than stocks?
A study conducted by Baghunter, as quoted by Time, compared the investment opportunities of gold with Hermès Birkin bags over 35 years. They found that, on average, people would get better returns by investing in Hermès Birkin bags compared to stocks or gold.
The risk of investing in luxury bags is much lower than stocks and gold.
The average annual return of Hermès Birkin bags is 14.2%, far above the average annual return of the 500 leading companies on the US stock exchange, which is only 8.7% per year, and gold, which is only -1.5% per year.
This is agreed upon by James Firestein, founder of the luxury resale platform OpenLuxury, who agrees that investing in luxury bags from Hermès can outperform gold.
“The resale value of Birkin and Kelly bags over the past 10 years has outperformed gold,” he said, as quoted by Fortune.
This is because the price of gold has fluctuated over the years and has rarely been consistent, unlike Birkin bags, which are always in high demand. Although these luxury bags have experienced several fluctuations, their value remains positive. This means that no one has ever lost money when reselling a Birkin bag.
Like buying a Picasso
The Birkin bag is known for its very high price, which can reach billions of rupiah for rare series. To maintain exclusivity, Hermès produces Birkin in limited quantities. They also never advertise this super-luxury bag. Quartz links the fantastic price of Hermès Birkin to its scarcity. Consumers need to wait up to six years just to get one of these bags.
“As a status symbol for the elite and the very rich, the main factor influencing the Birkin secondary market is the desire to own it. All signs indicate that this desire remains strong throughout 2016 since the bag was released in 1985,” according to Baghunter.
For some buyers, the Birkin bag is not a luxury item, but a valuable investment. Firestein estimates that 75% of Birkin owners actually use the bag, while the remaining 25% keep it as an investment.
“This is similar to buying a Picasso and keeping it at home, because you can see it, you can enjoy it,” said Firestein. “But then you resell it in a few years and exchange it for something else.”
source on Google [Gambas:Video CNBC]