Inside the Numbers: What 1,624 Resale Comps Tell Us About Investing in Luxury Bags Right Now

There is a lot of breathless talk in the resale world about bags outperforming the stock market. Most of it is marketing copy with nothing behind it. We went the other way. We pulled 1,624 logged sales and live listings across Hermès, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, and Goyard, drawn from Sotheby's auction results, Fashionphile, and Rebag, and let the numbers do the talking.

One note on what this is before we start. It is a snapshot of the 2024 to 2026 market as our dataset recorded it. These are descriptive figures, not projections. For where a specific bag may be headed rather than where it has traded, our Investment Index is the place to look.

The Brand Gap Is WIDER Than Most People Realize

Average resale price by brand, across every logged transaction in the dataset:

Hermès: $21,564 average, $20,500 median, across 994 comps

Louis Vuitton: $10,210 average, $4,000 median, across 60 comps

Chanel: $6,074 average, $4,950 median, across 493 comps

Goyard: $4,064 average, $3,600 median, across 39 comps

The distance between Hermès and the rest is not subtle. On average, a Hermès piece in the dataset commanded roughly two to five times the resale value of each of the other three houses. Two caveats belong alongside that figure. The Louis Vuitton and Goyard samples are small, at 60 and 39 comps, so read them as directional rather than definitive. And Louis Vuitton's average sits far above its median, which tells you a handful of high-value pieces are lifting the average while the typical bag trades much lower.

That concentration of value at the top is a large part of why Hermès anchors the growth assumptions in our Investment Index. For the projected figures themselves, the Index is where to look, presented there as informational projections rather than fixed rates.

Birkin vs. Kelly: A Closer Race Than You'd Think

Within Hermès, the Birkin still edges the Kelly, but by a narrower margin than the brand's reputation might suggest. The Birkin averaged $30,488, with a $28,200 median, across 334 comps. The Kelly averaged $28,100, with a $26,800 median, across 288 comps. That is a gap of under 9% between the two most iconic Hermès silhouettes.

The practical read is simple. If you are shopping the resale market and a well-kept Kelly is priced far below a comparable Birkin, the data does not support that wide a gap. The two trade closer together than most buyers assume.

The Exotic Skin Premium Is Real, and It's Roughly 2x

Exotic-skin Hermès pieces, meaning crocodile, alligator, lizard, and ostrich, averaged $38,266 in the dataset, against $19,106 for standard leathers such as Togo, Epsom, and Swift. That is almost exactly twice the price. The single highest comp in the entire dataset was a white Matte Niloticus crocodile Himalaya Birkin 30 with palladium hardware, which sold for $189,000.

Our Investment Index reflects this premium, but in a deliberate way. Rather than assume an exotic simply appreciates faster year after year, the model applies the premium as a one-time step up in the bag's baseline value, sized to what these materials genuinely command. The auction data here supports that step comfortably, and it keeps the projection honest rather than compounding a rare-material premium into runaway numbers.

What This Means If You're Buying for Appreciation

A few things the data makes plain.

Condition is doing more work than most buyers assume. Two otherwise identical bags can land in very different price brackets on condition alone, which is why condition sits near the center of any serious valuation and rewards careful ownership.

Goyard is the outlier worth watching. At a median around $3,600 to $4,000 it sits well below the other three houses in absolute price, but its trajectory is the more interesting part of the story, and it is why the brand earns its own place in our model rather than being folded in as an afterthought. Keep the small sample in mind here too, at 39 comps.

Hermès remains the core holding. Nothing else in the dataset comes close for depth of liquidity and price support, and that is the quiet reason it anchors so much of how we read the category.

For where any of these bags may be headed, our Investment Index carries the projected five-year values, presented as informational projections, not promises.

Data sourced from 1,624 logged listings and auction results across Sotheby's, Fashionphile, and Rebag (2024–2026). Figures are descriptive market data as of that period, not projections. Estimated values and projections on the Investment Index are informational only and are not financial advice.