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Should You Add Classic Cars To Your Investment Portfolio In 2026?
Alternative assets have gained prominence among ultra-high-net-worth investors seeking diversification beyond traditional stocks and bonds. Private equity, hedge funds, and real assets became standard portfolio components decades ago.
More recently, passion investments, art, wine, watches, and classic cars, have transitioned from pure consumption to strategic wealth allocation tools backed by institutional frameworks and performance data.
Classic cars present a particularly compelling case study in this evolution. Knight Frank’s 2023 Wealth Report documented 185% value appreciation for vintage automobiles over the preceding decade, positioning them second only to rare whiskies among tracked luxury assets.
This performance attracted institutional attention culminating in dedicated classic car investment funds like Azimut’s evergreen vehicle, signaling that what was once purely a collector’s pursuit now receives validation as a legitimate asset class within sophisticated portfolio construction.
The question you face isn’t whether classic cars have generated impressive historical returns. The data confirms they have.
The question is whether those returns justify the operational complexity, illiquidity, costs, and risks that come with owning physical automobiles as investment vehicles. The answer depends entirely on your wealth level, portfolio construction philosophy, and honest assessment of whether you’re an investor who happens to love cars or a car enthusiast rationalizing purchases as investments.
Why Are Major Auction Houses Increasing Buyer’s Premiums In 2026?
Auction houses make money from both sides of every deal. Sellers pay commissions. Buyers pay premiums. And over the past few decades, those buyer premiums have gone from single digits to 25% and climbing. Today, they’re going higher still.
Sotheby’s raised premiums effective February 2026. Christie’s did the same in September 2025. Six months apart, same direction, same logic.
When the two biggest houses in the world move together like this, it’s not a coincidence. It’s a signal that they’ve decided the market will absorb higher fees, and that they don’t need to compete on price to keep your business.
Understanding why this happened and what it means for you is more valuable than the numbers alone.
Why Is the Sparkling Wine Market Growing Faster Than Other Wine Categories?
The wine industry is in trouble. California wineries are sitting on millions of gallons of unsold inventory. Mid-tier Bordeaux and Burgundy estates are struggling to move bottles at prices they held comfortably for decades. Younger generations are drinking less wine overall. Health-conscious consumers are cutting back.
This isn’t a rough patch. It’s a structural shift, and if you hold wine as an investment, you need to understand what it means.
But there’s one category that doesn’t fit this picture. Sparkling wine is projected to grow from $23 billion in 2025 to over $30 billion by 2030, a 5.5% compound annual growth rate while the rest of the market contracts.
That’s $7 billion in new demand over five years in an industry otherwise defined by decline. The divergence is real, it’s measurable, and it creates a clear opportunity if you know where to position.
How To Identify Which Patek Philippe Models Will Be Discontinued Next
Every time Patek Philippe removes a model from its catalog, something predictable happens. Prices spike, collectors panic, and anyone who bought early wins.
The buyers who benefit most aren’t lucky. They’re paying attention to signals that most people ignore.
When Patek pulled the Nautilus 5711 in 2022, secondary market prices went to multiples of retail almost overnight. In 2024, 16 more models were cut while prices on surviving references rose 7%. The window to act closed fast. If you’d been watching the right indicators, you could have been on the right side of that trade.
Here’s how to read those indicators before the crowd does.
High-Net-Worth Investors Are Targeting Maui Real Estate Despite Market Volatility
When most buyers pull back from an uncertain market, sophisticated investors move toward it. Volatility creates mispricing. Corrections open entry points that simply don’t exist when competition keeps prices efficient. This counter-cyclical approach isn’t reckless.
It’s how generational wealth gets built in real estate, and right now it’s playing out clearly in Maui.
Island markets operate under rules that mainland real estate doesn’t follow. You cannot build more beachfront. You cannot create new land in desirable locations. The supply is fixed, and wealthy buyers consistently pay a premium for tropical climate, ocean access, and island exclusivity regardless of what the broader economy is doing.
What’s happening in Maui right now looks contradictory on the surface. Overall inventory is rising, days on market are stretching out, and buyers have more negotiating power than they’ve had in years.
Yet ultra-high-net-worth investors are deploying capital aggressively, driving single-family home prices up 20% year over year while the condo market corrects 25%. Understanding why those two things are true simultaneously is the key to the whole opportunity.
Should You Consider Small Caps In Your Portfolio?
Portfolio construction debates often center on geographic allocation, sector exposure, or growth versus value tilts. Yet one of the most consequential decisions receives surprisingly little attention from individual investors: the deliberate choice to allocate capital to small capitalization companies versus defaulting to the large-cap indices that dominate financial media coverage and passive fund flows.
While definitions vary by market and index provider, small cap generally encompasses publicly traded companies with market capitalizations below $2 billion to $10 billion.
You’re looking at thousands of businesses that collectively account for meaningful economic activity yet receive a fraction of the analyst coverage, institutional ownership, and investor attention compared to the mega-cap technology companies dominating headlines.
These aren’t penny stocks or speculative ventures. They’re established businesses flying below the radar of mainstream investment discourse.
Moving beyond a simple yes or no on small caps requires understanding that the question isn’t whether small companies outperform in absolute terms every year. They don’t.
The real question is whether deliberate small-cap exposure improves risk-adjusted returns, provides diversification benefits, and aligns with your time horizons and tolerance for the volatility that characterizes companies earlier in their growth trajectories.
At The Luxury Playbook, we don’t follow the market—we analyze it, decode it, and stay ahead of it.”