If you’ve been saving up for a dream designer handbag, you might want to scrap this one from your wishlist. The Hermes Birkin bag has long been a favourite of the rich fashion pack with a notoriously long wait list. It just made its case as the best designer investment piece ever as a rare version just broke a European record at auction, landing a very happy seller a cushy sum.
The bag in question is a ten-year-old Himalaya Niloticus Birkin bag crafted from Nile crocodile skin, which comes with 18-carat white gold hardware and more than 200 diamonds to boot. It was expected to go for a casual £100-150k ($177,000-$265,000 AUD) at a London auction yesterday, but blew past expectations with a final closing price of £162,500 ($286,000 AUD).
This Birkin is now officially the most expensive handbag ever sold at a European auction and the second-most expensive handbag ever. The top honour goes to another Birkin bag in a similar style which went for $449,000 AUD in Hong Kong last year.
Christie’s said the Himalaya Niloticus Birkin 30 was the ‘undisputed most valuable bag in the world’, due to the fact that they’re incredible difficult to craft. Named the Himalaya after the snowy white shade of the bag, albino crocodiles are very difficult to come by and the skill required to dye crocodile hide to such a degree is astronomical.
Unsurprisingly, Hermes only make a couple of them a year.
It won’t come as a shock that a number of A-listers love the bag, with the likes of Celine Dion and Kim Kardashian touting the wearable savings account around.
David Beckham actually bought a similar Himalaya Birkin for a reported $141k, a tidy gift for his wife Victoria Beckham.
At the same auction, a blue Birkin bag from 2006 also went for $177k. Forget buying a house, it sounds like a Birkin’s a safer investment.
This article originally appeared on marie claire UK
