Technical article

Passion Assets in a Portfolio: What the Price Indices Say About Cars, Watches, Wine and Art

The prices climbed together, peaked in 2022, and have been slower since.

By Neil Solomon · 4 min read

Picture someone who bought a classic car, two good watches and a case of Bordeaux over the years. They hold them for the love of it. Then a friend asks a plain question. Have these things earned their keep, compared with a fund of shares? It is a fair thing to wonder, and the indices give a partial answer.

Here is what they show. Each index measures something a little different, so we give the source and its tier beside each number.

The broad index

Knight Frank publishes a Luxury Investment Index. Its April 2026 release says the index closed 2025 down 0.4%, and that it has risen 38.6% over ten years (tier B). Knight Frank says 2023 and 2024 also saw declines, and that the strongest gains since 2013 came from 2020 to early 2022. The ten-year figure is one number for the whole basket. It is not split by cars, watches or wine in the text of the release, so we leave out the category ten-year figures.

Category by category

The two Patek numbers differ because the sources use different periods and different data. One is the 2025 calendar year. The other ends in February 2026. Neither is wrong. They show how much the answer depends on where the line is drawn.

The Hilco source also says average Rolex resale prices rose from about US$7,185 before the pandemic to about US$17,206 at the March 2022 peak, then fell, and that prices bottomed late in 2024 and early in 2025. Cars and wine show the same shape. The prices climbed together, peaked in 2022, and have been slower since.

How fast the picture changes

Knight Frank's 2023 edition had classic cars up 5% over twelve months to June, yet down 7% for that year to date. Art was up 30% in the same twelve months. A single year says little. A decade says a little more.

Three cautions

An index is an average. One discontinued Patek model that sold new at about US$34,000 now trades between about US$113,600 and US$147,700 (tier C, one model, not the market). Your own watch may sit nowhere near that.

An index also records prices that people paid. It is not what you would be paid. The gap between a dealer's offer and a retail price is large in this field, and later pieces in this series cover it.

Holding costs are not in the index either. Insurance, storage and appraisals come out of your pocket every year. The piece on holding costs gives the ranges that exist.

None of the sources here includes a comparison with a share index over the same dates. You could lay these numbers beside your own portfolio statements for the same years and see what that shows.

You might say the pleasure of owning these things is the return. That is a fair view, and no index measures it. The numbers above are for readers who want to know the money side as well.

Which of your things has done better, or worse, than you expected? Share it here. Someone else may be holding the same kind of piece and wondering.

Figures are estimates for planning, based on public data. Date read: October 2026.