With coins, sports memorabilia, trading cards, comics and movies all have headline years.
Recording the past is the easy part though.
To get the best value when you buy, and the best prices when you sell, you need to read the market.
A Lou Gherig shirt sold for $2.7 million this year and it wasn't even a record as prices boomed for memorabilia associated with big star players.
So what should you expect in collecting in 2026?
Everyone here has put their thinking caps on to give you some pointers, which we’ve collected in a series of blogs.
Predicting the future is impossible, information is overwhelming but knowledge is power
First the disclaimer.
We’ve done our best here to come up with some useful and actionable advice for you.
You’re going to find it really useful in the months ahead.
But, if one were to look for one constant in prevailing political and economic trends it would be unpredictability.
And those broader trends can impact on the collecting market.
This stamp has become one of the icons of global philatelly as enthusiasm for it in China translated into a global boom. Click the stamp to buy it.
The most obvious example in recent history has been the explosive growth of the Chinese economy after 2001 and the impact that had on, to take just one example, the value of Chinese stamps around the world.
Big auction houses have opened up in East Asia. And in the past year increasingly in the Gulf States. Knowing the tastes and enthusiasm of collectors there seems a great way for traders and sellers to follow the money in a huge global market.
Generative AI has added another layer of information to the web.
Overwhelming isn't it?
But how far can you trust it?
HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, the sort of AI that does not have a good name.
While your browser is claiming expertise, how accurate is it?
Real, human expertise, knowledge, wisdom, experience…
These will all be sought out and be at a premium.
And, it is likely that specialist AI's will arrive in the collecting sphere to surpass the potential downside of the general Large Language Model machines.
General collecting trends
If we take 2025 as a guide what can we conclude?
I think it’s fair to say that collectibles, as a whole, performed very well, but particularly at the top end of the market.
We saw lots of records set:
Too many individual coin-type records, but including the recent and continuing Traveller’s Collection sales with the 1629 Prague-struck 100 ducat coin going for 2,388,750 CHF (about $2,950,000) in November.
Star Wars boomed, with a Darth Vader lightsaber setting a record in September that was blasted down in December when the first film’s first poster art was sold for $3.8 million.
This image is now a multimillion dollar painting. Image courtesy of Heritage Auctions.
The Winter Egg, a Russian imperial Faberge jewel sold for over $30 million (£22.9) in December too.
Superman #1 set a new comic book mark of over $9 million in November.
A basketball card featuring Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan (and signed by both) sold for nearly $13 million (£9.56 million) in August to set a record for sports cards.
In November, Patek Philippe saw a new brand record when the watchmaker’s legendary steel 1518 perpetual calendar chronograph sold for $17.6 million to become probably the most expensive vintage wrist watch.
The photograph that fronted David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane album became the most valuable ever original album artwork with its £381,400 sale in November.
Jane Birkin’s original Birkin bag; a Titanic watch; Tony Hawk’s spinning skateboard; a 1907 $10 coin; numerous wines; racing cars; multiple whiskeys; a Klimt setting a modern art record, a Frida Kahlo for a work by a woman…
You get the picture.
There’s no reason to see why this shouldn’t continue.
And this is the promise of collecting: the best items, which are unique and irreplaceable, of the highest quality; of undoubted provenance will continue to rise in value.
And, you don’t need to be shopping in those rarefied sale rooms (or increasingly online) to take those lessons on board and buy the highest quality collectibles you can afford.
The passage of time is predictable
Taylor Swift's signature, dated 1989 crucially, on a guitar that was sold for less than $3,000 within the last decade.
In 2018, Julien’s Auctions sold a guitar signed by Taylor Swift for $2,880.
Perhaps using that as a guide, in May of this year they listed another similar instrument (also signed by Miley Cyrus) with a $6,000 to $8,000 estimate.
It sold for $104,000.
Now, you can say that 2018 was a long time ago, and Swift has since become the biggest artist in the world.
But the signs were already there that she was going to be: she was touring stadiums, the album she was touring that year (Reputation - already trading on and commenting on her public persona) was an enormous hit, spanning the streaming and physical sales switch effortlessly to sell millions of copies and top charts globally. (It's one of the biggest digital albums in Chinese music history, a useful tidbit for collectors.)
Can you spot the star in 2026 whose memorabilia is on the market and might yet become the next Swift (or Bieber or Robert Downey Jr or, well, even Donald Trump, who was selling his own autograph not so long ago)?
You can also take note of the 20th anniversary of Taylor's first album in 2026.
And, there’s another predictable cycle around aging fanbases whose teenage enthusiasms can be relived later in life when they have money and time to indulge them.
Increasingly, these enthusiasms are electronic, digital, and even virtual.
There’s a challenge for collectors.
More predictable are anniversaries.
Next year, I predict with a fair degree of confidence, will see big sales around the birth centenary of Marilyn Monroe (already the most collectible Hollywood star), and the founding of the United States of America in its 250th year, particularly around founding documents.
Might that be a peak for Marilyn, or will she be one of the very few pop culture figures to become a genuine historical figure with a collecting market that reflects that?
Is this lock of hair from Marilyn Monroe's most famous personal appearance about to boom in price? Click the image to find out more.
It seems possible.
Sellers can cash in then, but collectors looking for value (and rising values for resale) are better off casting their eyes to the future, and, say, 2028’s centenary of the UK granting full voting rights to women, or Steamboat Willie debuting Mickey Mouse. Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828, Francesco Goya died.
Keep doing what you’re doing in 2026
As we hand over to our experts, you’ll see that despite individual market moves and the inherent unpredictability of, well, life there are some constants.
And they’re the things that you’ll find here: authenticity, quality, provenance, rarity.
And passion.
Because when you collect what you love you win in any case.
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Happy New Year!
