As the year turned, Heritage Auctions announced $2.5 billion in total sales.
Not bad.
The Dallas-based auction house listed big increases in revenue in a number of departments. And added record after record to the books.
Investing in Star Wars back in 1977 was a good, prescient buy. Image courtesy of Heritage Auctions, ha.com.
In just one house, 2025 saw:
A $3.9-million record for the most valuable piece of movie poster art (which was also the most valuable piece of Star Wars memorabilia).
By my reckoning, the second most valuable movie prop was sold, with the $14.8-million auction of a Rosebud sled from Citizen Kane.
There was a record for an unsigned Lord of the Rings set at $250,000.
A Frank Frazetta painting set another auction record for the artist and comic/fantasy artwork ($13.5 million).
And let’s not forget the most valuable ever comic books sale, the Superman #1 that realised $9.1 million in November.
I could go on.
Sotheby’s sold a Klimt portrait for $236.4 million in November to set a record for the artist and modern art.
The night of the sale was a record for the house, with over $700 million of sales in a New York Autumn series of sales that made over $1 billion.
Artsy reported a total of more than $2 billion in sales at the Big Three houses (Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips) in those seasonal art sales.
Sixteen new artist records were set in just a week.
When we prepared our reviews of 2025, we were listing record after record.
Medieval English coins, letters sent from the Titanic, Titanic memorabilia more generally, post-Prohibition American whiskey, tennis racquets, handbags, skateboards, album art, Faberge eggs…
What is happening with collecting markets?
Most of us aren’t shopping at these levels.
But the people who do have plenty of money.
And it’s money that is looking for places to go.
Ideally places that make a return.
But, when you have enormous sums of money, well, $10 million on a comic book doesn’t seem so bad.
These records are by definition outliers: exceptional works that are very rarely discovered or sold.
But the preponderance of recent records does reflect large amounts of money sloshing around the top end of our economies.
We’ve also seen other broad trends reflected in collecting markets.
This stamp has survived the correction in Chinese stamps because of its quality and exceptional demand for it. Click the image to find out more.
We recorded Chinese stamps rising 200% and even 300% in value from the start of the 21st century.
Again, a very evident international trend reflecting globalisation and the explosion in the Chinese economy.
Some states in the Middle East are preparing themselves for the coming end of fossil fuel wealth by reinventing themselves as international tourist and cultural destinations.
That’s bought another stream of money into the top end of the auction market. State money, that is for all-intents-and-purposes limitless.
The best example is the 2017 purchase of Salvator Mundi for a world record (still standing) $450 million. Louvre Abu Dhabi was announced as the buyer, but it now seems the painting has gone to Saudi Arabia.
Corrections and rebalancing, trends and crazes
Collecting is a big economic sector.
It’s probably worth upwards of $300 billion. And it’s predicted to grow substantially over the next few years.
But, the collectibles market is also chaotic and hard to measure.
It’s completely global, and lots of activity is done in private deals and even barter-like trades that are tough to measure. Most collectible items also have a first-order use - is a record collector who buys a new vinyl LP for their collection a collectibles buyer, or a music consumer?
The infamous "Butcher Sleeve" of Yesterday and Today: a great listen, and now tens of thousands of dollars worth of packaging and vinyl.
Broad trends though are measurable.
And we saw some corrections in recent years as a couple of exceptional bounces evened out.
Remember, we mentioned money pouring into Chinese stamp collecting. That got to the stage that China stamps became worthwhile subjects for short-term speculative trading. That period seems to have reached its peak and the field is now returned to collectors, who buy and sell at a much more considered pace and has left real philatelic quality washed up by a receding high tide of lesser items.
The Covid 19 pandemic saw a considerable boom in hobbyist collecting, particularly in rare and vintage watches.
In psychological terms it appears to have been a simple case of large numbers of people confined to their homes looking for an interest. Again, this almost certainly saw the market move to a point where speculative traders - watch flipping videos on YouTube were common - were helping to push up values.
That particular boom seems to have passed too, with something of a correction in the watch market.
But again, it's a market that is still seeing records set at the very highest level, and that rewards long-term holding of the best quality items.
A Rolex Submariner, the sort of watch that can ride out short-term ups and downs. Click the image to find out more.
Prediction games
For those who want to invest in collections and collectibles for the long term, the advice is simple and enduring.
Ignore these short term cycles and buy as rare, as high-quality, and as good condition as you can afford to. Pay close attention to provenance and authenticity when you buy.
Those who want to trade in collectibles will need to learn prediction skills.
Which can make a fool out of anyone.
Currently doing well are coins (in part because of preciptitous surges in precious metal prices), vintage, luxury handbags, basketball shirts, sports trading cards, Pokemon…. New classes of digital collectibles and crypto currencies have attracted a good deal of interest, and have also become the focus of short-term speculative trading.
What will it be next? That’s the big question that you may win big if you get it right.
Labubu is a craze. Will it become a trend?
Things change, things stay the same
My opinion remains that most collectors are driven by their passion for the items they collect.
High-end, very high quality collectibles are likely to have long-term investment potential.
And collecting markets - which generally have quite pure supply and demand mechanisms; no-one “needs” a mint Penny Black - will see speculative booms, corrections and all sorts of short-term volatility driven by, well, who we are as humans.
I find longer term planning for market trends (as you'll see from these blogs) an interesting and fun addition to the hobby of collecting: what historical anniversaries are coming up, is a big movie adaptation going to put focus on a book like Wuthering Heights, is a major sale going to raise all boats across a broader collecting segment?
It's not the high-octane day-trading way to seek returns but it's a collector's natural skill-set and one worth taking advantage of if you can.
Collecting will endure though.
I’ll do it today - I’ll consider a purchase or research something or boast about something I already own.
So will maybe hundreds of millions of other collectors around the world.
It really is a fundamental human drive.
And it will never go away.
You can put money on that.
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