A bet born of chaos

Dana Auslander, a Blackstone alum, watched Trump's reelection and expected volatility. Gold was the obvious hedge. She went looking for a stranger one.

“I knew we were in for a volatility shit show.”

The answer was on Madison Avenue

Auslander had bought Hermes for twenty years and watched the bags get harder to get. Tight supply, rising stock, a shop window doing the work of a hedge fund.

A 3,550 percent climb

Hermes stock went from 53 euros in 2004 to roughly 2,300 euros in late 2024. Gold rose about 70 percent in the year after Trump returned to office.

Luxus opens the first fund

Launched in 2021, Fund 1 raised $1 million from accredited investors at $100,000 a head, then bought Birkins and Kellys on the secondary market.

Sell the bags, book the return

Over 15 months the fund exits bags at a premium through Sotheby's Buy Now, the RealReal, and eBay. It has sold 46 of 56, at a claimed 44.9 percent net return.

“That's way better than anything else.”

Everyone wants a slice

Berlin's Konvi sells retail investors fractional stakes in whiskey and classic cars, with a manager exiting each item after a holding period.

Sneakers as securities

Retired NFL safety Gerome Sapp built Rares around collectible sneakers. His team paid $1.8 million at Sotheby's for Kanye West's 2008 Grammy Air Yeezy 1 prototypes.

Watches versus the FANGs

Antiquorum alum Dominic Khoo pitched the Watch Fund on a simple wager: Rolex and its peers would beat Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google.

Meet the investor consumer

Consultant Niki McMorrough says the richest buyers now treat every purchase as a place to park capital, an heirloom or a future sale.

“Everything they buy is an asset. It's all an investment.”

Undercutting the resellers

Pandemic markups left resellers anchored high and loaded with venture debt, pushed into consignment. Luxus buys outright and competes on speed.

“We only care about sales velocity... and churn.”

The fake problem nobody solved

Everything comes off the secondary market, so counterfeits are a live risk. Luxus leans on small resellers guarding their own reputations, plus a quarterly in-house checklist.

Small on purpose

Auslander plans to add watches and launch local funds in the Middle East and Asia, but refuses retail money. Scale, she argues, would eat the returns.

“We'll keep it small because the investors are a club.”

From art funds to diamonds

Rayah Levy says she built the world's first art fund in Australia in 2003, then quit after two recessions taught her what art actually was.

“I'd said for 15 years that art was the strongest form of commerce in recorded human history, and it turned out... it was a speculative investment.”

Mines that will close

Levy backs colored diamonds because the supply is finite. Australia's Argyle mine shut in 2020, and she expects every known colored-diamond mine tapped out within 40 years.

Set it and it's personal

A mounted jewel is personal property. A loose polished stone is a commodity, taxed differently, which is part of why banks are circling the category.

“If it's a loose, polished stone, it's considered a commodity.”

$2.5 million became $6 million

A financier in his 40s, told to diversify into hard assets, put $2.5 million in escrow with FCD Invest. He exited four years later at $6 million.

The costs stocks don't have

Hard assets carry insurance and commercial-grade vault storage, though tax rules can make that deductible. Levy stores the stones and never wears them.

“I have never worn diamonds, but I do store them.”

Distrust built this market

Knight Frank's Liam Bailey traces collectible investing to the Great Recession, when family offices soured on advisers and wanted things they could hold.

“Rather than the alphabet soup of financial products.”

Gen Z buys the story

Gen Z puts 56 percent of its spend into collectibles against a 41 percent average. It is cultural capital, and better dinner conversation than ETFs.

The graveyard is filling up

Otis was absorbed by Public and no longer exists. Khoo's Watch Fund lost a Singapore suit and closed to new money. Rares shuttered after Kanye's rants cratered Yeezy prices.

“A fool and his money are very quickly parted, and a lot of this stuff is very foolish.”