Designer bag (and charms) vs gold: Where to invest, which appreciates more

Wow beautiful rare color,” Filipino-American fashion blogger Bryan Boy said of actress Heart Evangelista’s Hermes Birkin bag in avocado green, charmed with an equally vibrant Takashi Murakami Flower and a Louis Vuitton Vivienne doll.

The charms alone have price tags enough to make your eyes pop —  the Murakami charm is definitely not “mura” (cheap) at $350 (about P20,000) to $745 (P42,363), while the LV Vivienne doll is pegged at $1,390 (P79,040) to P1,580 (P122,589), according to LV and eBay.

The LV Vivienne doll charm is priced over 50 times more than the viral charm Labubu, which retails at P1,150 to P12,000.

And now, let us go to the Birkin. 

A green Birkin, according to Internet searches, ranges anywhere between P900,000 to over P5 million — if pre-owned. A brand new one costs roughly $31,500 or over P1.7 million.

Heart, a known Birkin collector, exhibited some of the pieces in her collection, alongside her Hermes scarves, at the “HeArt & Style by Love Marie” exhibition in SM Megamall, which I covered and wrote about in 2017.

“Heart Evangelista” and “Birkin” are now almost synonymous at search engines, and a quick AI (Artificial Intelligence) look up would list down some from her collection, including at least two Himalaya Birkins, “one of the most coveted Hermès bags in existence” that is second only to Jane Birkin’s original Hermes bag when it comes to expensiveness at auctions, according to Sotheby’s.

“Crafted from Niloticus crocodile skin, the bag is dyed in a distinctive white-to-grey gradient meant to evoke the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas,” Sotheby’s website described the Himalaya Birkin. “Whether set with diamonds or not, Himalaya Birkins are celebrated for their rarity, craftsmanship and visual impact. They consistently command a premium in the secondary market compared to other crocodile Birkins, with pricing influenced by size, age and condition.”

French luxury brand Hermes has no formal or publicly accessible waiting list for the Birkins, but the reservation process reportedly involves building a relationship with a sales associate and proof of purchase history. The rest, according to reports, have to wait anytime from months to years to have a piece in their hands, whether they are celebrities or not.

Bags of value

According to Agence France-Presse, modern-day Birkins are offered to loyal clients with prices starting at about $10,000 (over half a million pesos). Besides Heart, the bag is a hit among other celebrities like Jennifer Lopez, Victoria Beckham and the Kardashians.

Last year, those refused access to the bags sued Hermes in a class-action suit in California. 

But why are Heart and other fashionistas like her willing to go through lengths to collect designer bags (and charms) such as the Birkin and the LV Vivienne doll?

According to viral reports, that is because designer bags, the Birkin in particular, appreciate more than gold.

In a 2024 story published by Fortune titled “Birkin bags can double in value in five years. An Hermès expert explains why it’s a better investment than gold,” luxury resale and authentication platform OpenLuxury founder James Firestein said, “The resale value of particularly the Birkin and Kelly bags over the past 10 years has outpaced gold” due to a number of reasons.

Apart from only customers with proven purchase history, such as Heart, are offered the opportunity to buy a Birkin or a Kelly, even them cannot choose the styles to buy since the company only allows boutiques to sell only a number of Birkins per season. This only fuels the craze for the bags even more and adds to their luxury and exclusivity, known to collectors as the “Hermes Game.”

“In 2021, the Himalaya Birkin 25 emerged as the most sought-after size, selling for over $300,000 at Sotheby’s. By 2023, pristine examples of the same size were trading closer to $200,000. The larger Birkin 30 typically sells around $150,000 in similar condition, while older bags with visible signs of wear tend to fetch closer to $100,000,” Sotheby’s reported.

Just last July, the original Birkin, the first-ever Birkin bag designed by Hermes for celebrity Jane Birkin, smashed records at Sotheby’s auction in Paris, selling for 8.58 million euros ($10 million) to a “private collector from Japan,” making it the second-most expensive fashion item ever sold at auction after actress Judy Garland’s The Wizard of Oz ruby red slippers, which sold for $32.5 million in 2024 in Texas.

Before the “OG” Birkin, its sister Hermes bag, a diamond-encrusted crocodile skin Kelly 28, previously held the record price for a handbag in an auction by fetching $513,000 (almost P30 million) at Christie’s in Hong Kong in 2021.

At the recent Salcedo Auctions “The Well-Appointed Life” live and online bidding wars last 27 September in Makati City, among the over 800 items that went under the hammer was a sole Chanel Maxi Flap XXL bag with grained calfskin and gold-tone metal, with a starting bid price at P550,000 to P600,000, a higher estimate than National Hero Jose Rizal’s Ateneo de Municipal report card with a starting price at P350,000 to P400,000. 

“Metals are collectible, vintage bags are collectible as well. All of them are in these different collecting categories,” Salcedo Auctions chairman and chief specialist Richie Lerma told me at the auction’s preview last month.

“For rare vintage bags, etc., again, supply and demand is a big factor to the desirability of these pieces and the demand of these pieces as well.”

Where to invest, which appreciates more

A registered financial planner, who requested to stay anonymous, told me that if he were to choose where to put his money in — on a designer item like a Birkin or on gold — he would choose gold for the following reasons:

• Gold is universal — anywhere you go, gold is gold — you can sell, resell and pawn it in any country especially during an emergency — something you cannot do with a designer item whose name only rings in limited markets.

• Gold is recognized even during wartime — you can use it to bribe your way out of freedom from captors or even buy commodities when money gets devalued – unlike designer stuff that might not do the trick because these would be useless in times of war.

• Gold is timeless — a Birkin might appreciate more than gold in five years, but gold’s appreciation is stable over the years, as compared to a designer item whose appreciation might only span for a short time or while the fad lasts.

• Gold is easier to maintain — Unlike designer goods that are made of leather and other materials that can be subjected to wear and tear over time, making the product almost unusable, gold can be remolded or passed on as it is and only needs polishing and cleaning for maintenance.

• Gold is pocketable or easier to carry — Since gold can come in the form of jewelry, it can be easier to wear and kept. A gold bar is a different story though!

“Of course, the gold and silver, we follow the international price, and that affects the price of these pieces,” Lerma noted.

If actress Bea Alonzo were to choose between a designer item or jewelry, she said she would go for the latter. 

“I feel like it’s a good investment, not that I’m saying other bags like Birkin bags, or I know that these are also good investments, but for me, you know, it’s (jewelry) not fast fashion,” Bea told DAILY TRIBUNE at her launch last Wednesday as new endorser of jewelry brand MyDiamond.

“I mean with diamonds or with jewelry, you can pass it down to your daughter or your daughter-in-law, your siblings. I’m traditional. I like investing in jewelry. That’s what my mom taught me ever since.”

Cristalle Belo Henares-Pitt also chose jewelry over a designer bag.

“Jewelry will last a longer time and it is something that I can pass on to my daughter and my family members,” she explained. “So it’s something that I can give to myself, but it will last me many, many generations versus a bag, especially the Philippines, we live in a humid country, so they deteriorate, the leather turns to bacon because of the humidity over time. With jewelry, there is a way to preserve it and at the same time, you could wear for going out, adventure. It would not go out of style. So you could pass it for the next generation to enjoy.”

For exhibit curator Ricky Francisco of Fundacion Sanso, nothing beats investing in an artwork over designer items or ordinary jewelry.

“Actually, some people have this propensity for collecting things and there are people who will always find a way to distinguish themselves from others, especially if they’re in a capacity to show they are in a higher level economically than others,” he pondered.

“However, I think that manufactured goods, even though they’re one-of-a-kind, are manufactured goods. For me, personally, artworks being the product of a person’s life are much more valuable than anything that you can manufacture.”