Collectibles

Collectibles recap 2011 – A good year for art, a bad year for Bordeaux wines
Looking back at 2011, you will hardly find an equity investment strategy that delivered positive returns above inflation. In a financial year dominated by macro themes, most equity and hedge fund strategy indexes are down through November.

Time to look at how prices of the two most important collectibles categories art and fine wine developed this year. Indexes show mixed results and some surprises.

Art
The Mei Moses Art Index series, developed and calculated by Beautiful Asset Advisors LLC, tracks repeat sales auction prices. Results show that 2011 was a very good year for art investors.

The All Art Index was up 10.2% in 2011, clearly outperforming equities: The MSCI World Index lost 6% over the last twelve months, and the S&P 500 was nearly flat in the same period.

Fine wine
In contrast, the fine wine markets showed mixed results last year. Auction price indexes provided by London-based wine exchange Liv-Ex started a sharp decline in the second half of the year after steady gains in H1.

Autographs
Autographs are one of the more niche collectibles markets, and little is known about the investment potential of that niche. Paul Fraser Collectibles has recently launched an index listing the values of the 40 most regularly traded autographs.

The index gained 5.2% over the last year. Since 2000, the index is up 358%, or 14.84% per year, and performance ranged between +1182.1% and 95.5% for signed photos.

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