Investment

Many people see rare and collectable items of memorabilia as a safe investment for the future. With a healthy secondary market for memorabilia such as leading auction houses (Christies, Bonhams, Sotherby’s) we have experienced a strong increase in values of collectable items that looks set to continue.

Malcolm Forbes of Forbes magazine comments on autograph values…
“In my view, they are the most undervalued of all areas of collecting, especially when you consider what people are paying for even second rate paintings.”

An independent study by Stanley Gibbons an alternative investment company specialising in stamps and autographs carried out a study called the SG100 which tracks the value of 100 popular autographs. Over the last 5 years these autographs have shown impressive growth with an average value increase of 169.8% - 24% per annum. Strong individual items include Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Pele, Muhammad Ali, Robbie Williams and 1966 World cup memorabilia which all provided a fantastic growth rate.

We can advise collectors on potentially strong investment items and can even help build an investment portfolio to suit. Over the last couple of years we have experienced a large increase in collectors buying for investment purposes. They have mainly been purchasing items which are highly collectable (Ali, Woods etc) and items which are limited in edition from official sources such as Upper Deck and Online Authentics which basically enforces the authenticity of the item, which in tern makes them more desirable and therefore more valuable. Other investment collectors have speculated across a number of sport stars in the knowledge that when they pass away prices tend to rocket, this was seen recently with George Best and prices quadrupled. A similar scenario can already be seen with Muhammad Ali who due to both his age and medical condition will cease signing autographs on a commercial basis later this year. This obviously will limit supply which will ultimately drive prices upwards.

Top 10 investment items:

1) Muhammad Ali
2) Tiger Woods
3) Jack Nicklaus
4) Pele
5) 1966 World Cup
6) Ben Hogan
7) Robbie Williams
8) Diego Maradona
9) Garry Sobers
10) George Best