Given the low interest rates, uncertainty is growing among investors. Where to put your money? Traditional market purchases such as securities or gold seem risky. Political crises, like the conflict between North Korea and the US, continue to gnaw away at confidence. That's why some investors prefer to turn to niche investments – in the hope of a return.
Such rather bizarre investments include, for example, fossils and dinosaur bones. These finds from prehistoric times are traded briskly, especially in the US, because there landowners are allowed to keep whatever they dig up on their property. While petrified relics require palaeontological expertise and are hard to assess in terms of increases in value, well-preserved dinosaur skeletons fetch sums in the millions. Even small pterosaurs command six-figure euro amounts. But beware – there are many fakes in circulation.
The collectors' market for comic books is more manageable. While the first Superman comic cost a mere ten cents in 1938, in 2016, after 78 years, it fetched a proud one million dollars at auction. The most money is fetched by copies with no signs of wear, well packaged and sealed. The German first edition of Mickey Mouse is now valued at a respectable €12,000. Exclusive handbags, too, are good for surprising jumps in value. Some are as expensive as a detached house. At Christie's in 2015, a crocodile-leather Hermès handbag with diamond-set yellow-gold fittings was auctioned for 223,000 dollars.
Even if collecting these "investments" is often bound up with fond childhood memories, the returns you can expect are actually very modest.
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Not suitable for short-term speculation
Even cuddly toys undergo rapid increases in value. Teddy bears from the early years sometimes change hands for six-figure sums. The Steiff bear “Happy” from 1926 fetched around €157,000 at an auction in 2002. Here, too, the rule applies: the less cuddled, the more costly.
As much as later collecting and trading may awaken nostalgic memories – the prospects for returns remain consistently uncertain. The performance of collector's items like those mentioned above is by no means predictable, and can only be judged a success in hindsight. The bulk of these pieces are worthless after a few years, or fetch mere pennies. The best example is commemorative coins, some of which are pushed onto the market with a lot of marketing effort, but after years fetch barely more than their material value. You'd do better to invest the time it takes to find such gems elsewhere.
Better positioned are investors who put their trust in a sustainable investment strategy built on a scientifically and methodically consistent basis. Provided you follow a global and diversified approach and invest in the two by far most important asset classes – equities and bonds.
At quirion, investors hold indirect stakes in more than 10,000 companies worldwide through ETFs, index funds and asset-class funds. With their know-how and experience, a professional asset management team also makes sure that your portfolio structure stays scientifically and methodically balanced. And there's yet another advantage over collector's items: quirion's solutions are liquid, so they can be topped up or dissolved at any time free of charge. What's more, you don't have to worry about any elaborate care, storage or insurance for your supposed investment.
