3 Luxury Bags That Add Capital to Your Closet, Per Resale Data

Sometimes when you get the bag, you are also, literally, getting the bag.

The secondhand market is a bright spot for luxury. The global resale market is growing three times as fast as the firsthand market and is expected to reach as high as $360 billion by 2030 — up from between $210 billion and $220 billion today — according to a report by BCG and Vestiaire Collective released this month.

Handbags reliably drive luxury secondhand sales. The nearly 8,000 respondents to BCG and Vestaire’s survey said that an average of 40% of their handbags were purchased secondhand — an outsize share, given that, on average, 28% of their total closets were purchased secondhand.

“A classic handbag is a classic handbag is a classic handbag,” Lara Osborn, the SVP of merchandising and fulfillment at luxury secondhand retailer Fashionphile, told Business Insider. She said that bags tend to be more evergreen in style than clothing or shoes, handle wear better, and are generally one-size-fits-all.

They also tend to hold their value, something customers are “now trained to think about,” Osborn said.

Many seek out handbags with original packaging — down to the tissue paper — and authentication materials, knowing that will make it easier to resell them down the line, she said.

According to the BCG and Vestaire survey, 41% of secondhand sellers offload their pieces to recover residual value, and 62% sell so they can shop more.

While a select few handbags can be resold at a price higher than their retail value — marking a true return on investment — most customers, Osborn said, aren’t looking for that when they “invest” in a bag.

A shopping win is “when you can buy, use, and enjoy it, and sell it at some point and get a big portion of your money back,” she said. “You own a piece of capital that you can apply to something else; it’s money in your closet, sitting and waiting to be spent.”

The bags most likely to retain their value are also among Fashionphile’s top-selling. These are generally considered “safe styles” and “heritage icons,” according to Fashionphile’s 2025 Ultra-Luxury Resale Report.”

“The appetite is just for timeless, classic,” Osborn said. “I’m not going to look out of place carrying this in a year, two years, three years.”

These are three of Fashionphile’s top-selling evergreen bags that will add capital to your closet.