"Investment bag" is one of fashion's most seductive phrases, and one of its least precise. Whether a handbag holds its value depends on the model, the condition, the moment and the platform doing the selling. Fortunately, the largest resale businesses now publish annual data on exactly this question. Read carefully, and side by side, two of them offer a useful picture of the market as of October 2026, including where their numbers do not agree.
A word before we start: these reports come from companies that profit from resale. Their data is real and large-scale, but it reflects their own marketplaces, and none of it is financial advice.
The two reports
The RealReal's 2026 Resale Report, titled The (R)evolution of Resale, was published on 25 August 2026. The company says it draws on 15 years of data across more than 50 million items sold and a community of 44 million members, and it tracks how the value of individual pieces changes over time.
Rebag's 2025 Clair Report, released on 10 December 2025, is built on Clair, the company's appraisal index. It measures "value retention": the resale price as a percentage of the current retail price, over the trailing twelve months. A figure above 100 per cent means a bag is reselling for more than it costs new.
The two measure different things. The RealReal looks at price change over a decade; Rebag compares resale with today's retail. Keep that in mind as you read the numbers.
Hermès remains the benchmark
On Rebag's measure, Hermès reclaimed the top position in 2025 with average value retention of 138 per cent, up 38 per cent on 2024. The company's press release singled out the Kelly Mini II at 282 per cent, the Sellier Birkin at 183 per cent and the Constance at 137 per cent, and attributed some of the premium to "stricter quota limits" that tightened supply.
The longer view is just as striking. Rebag says its decade-long analysis shows Birkin resale values have risen 92 per cent since 2015, against Hermès' own retail price growth of 43 per cent. Goyard followed Hermès with 132 per cent retention, and The Row entered what Rebag calls its "unicorn" category, retention of 85 per cent or more, for the first time at 97 per cent.
Rebag's chief marketing officer, Elizabeth Layne, told WWD that Chanel and Louis Vuitton "each reached similar highs in recent years — peaking at 92 percent and 88 percent retention respectively". Rebag's report also flagged newer releases, including the Chanel 25 and Gucci's Softbit, whose resale values were already exceeding their original retail prices, as Luxury Daily summarised it.
The decade view: icons that appreciated
The RealReal's headline finding is that the most coveted bags of the past decade have not lost value; many have gained it. Its report tracked the average sale price of marquee styles between 2016 and 2026.
Here the coverage diverges, and it is worth being precise. Haute Living's summary of the report lists the Gucci Jackie as the standout, rising from an average of $294 to $3,012 (around ten times), followed by the YSL Mombasa (around eight times, from about $200 to $1,600), the Fendi Peekaboo (three times), the Celine Luggage (twice), the Lady Dior (1.4 times) and the Prada Galleria (1.3 times). It describes the Louis Vuitton Neverfull and Speedy as "essentially flat".
Daily Front Row's report on the same study gives a different list: Fendi Baguette up ten times, YSL Mombasa eight times, Gucci Jackie three times, Louis Vuitton Monogram Speedy twice, Lady Dior 1.4 times and LV Monogram Neverfull 1.3 times.
We have not been able to reconcile the two. One possibility is that the report contains more than one chart and the outlets drew on different ones, but until the full report is checked, the safe conclusions are those both agree on: the Saint Laurent Mombasa rose roughly eightfold, the Lady Dior about 1.4 times, and the Gucci Jackie appreciated substantially. Treat the Baguette, Peekaboo and Louis Vuitton figures as unconfirmed.
Nostalgia is now a search term
The RealReal's data also shows how people shop for the past. Demand for vintage on the platform is up 432 per cent since 2020, and decade-specific saved searches rose 135 per cent year on year. Shoppers are searching by designer tenure: saved searches rose 650 per cent for "Phoebe Philo Celine", 400 per cent for "Nicolas Ghesquière Balenciaga" and 375 per cent for "Marc Jacobs Louis Vuitton".
The same report recorded searches for Chanel's artistic director Matthieu Blazy up 10,967 per cent, a figure that says as much about the excitement around his arrival as it does about resale.
The "future resale stars"
Both companies also try to predict what will hold value next. The RealReal named six newer bags, according to Ethos: the Ferragamo Hug (search interest up 355 per cent between the first and second quarters of 2026, reselling between $1,500 and $3,400), the Chanel Cerf (a 2005 Karl Lagerfeld design, $3,000 to $5,000), The Row's Terrasse, the Celine Halfmoon (retailing at $2,800 and reselling at $2,470), Phoebe Philo's Gig (averaging about $2,000) and the Saint Laurent Y tote.
Rebag, looking towards 2026, argued that creative succession at houses including Chanel, Celine, Bottega Veneta, Dior, Loewe and Gucci would "favor craftsmanship, material integrity, and design longevity".
How to read all this
A few principles follow from the data, and from its limits.
- Retention and appreciation are different. A bag can appreciate over ten years in dollar terms and still resell below today's retail if list prices have risen faster.
- Supply drives the premium. Rebag explicitly links Hermès' figures to tighter supply. Bags that are easy to buy new rarely resell above retail.
- Platform data is not the whole market. Each report reflects its own buyers and sellers.
- Condition and completeness matter. Neither report suggests that a worn bag without its original accessories fetches headline prices.
- Buy for use first. The bags that do best are the ones people still want to carry.
For a calmer way to weigh houses against each other, use the Casadi brand compare tool, and for more on the resale economy, see the Journal.