the collectible luxury goods market performed strongly in 2021 as investors worldwide snatched up topclass physical assets to hedge against inflation and stock market volatility according to knight frank’s annual wealth report released tuesday overall knight frank’s luxury investment index which tracks the value of 10 luxury assets including art cars watches wine rare whisky jewelry colored diamonds handbags coins and furniture rose 9 in 2021 the growth rate was the strongest annual performance since 2018 knight frank said “the covid19 pandemic certainly hasn’t dented the enthusiasm of collectors who have continued to pay significant amounts of money for an increasingly eclectic mix of assets including basketball sneakers comics and even meteorites” andrew shirley editor of the knight frank wealth report said in a statement all the 10 asset classes appreciated in value in 2021 with growth rate ranging from 1 for furniture to 16 annually for both rare watches and fine wine making them the bestperforming assets according to the report art came third in the ranking with an annual 13 price increase among the two largest auction houses sotheby’s posted record sales of us73 billion in 2021 christie’s recorded a fiveyear high of us71 billion the biggest trend in the art world last year was the surge in nonfungible token or nft sales with the world’s main auction houses selling a total of £169 million us227 million of nft or crypto art according to the report the latest analysis showed a shift from a year ago when collectible handbags were the bestperforming luxury asset of 2020 with a 13 price increase in 2021 this asset class recorded 7 value appreciation rare whisky was the best performer in 2019 when it was first included in the index with a 25 annual price growth over the 10year term rare whisky has the best investment return at 428 over that 10year period cars were the second bestperforming luxury asset in the long run with a 164 price increase last year the average value of collectible cars went up 3