John Kapon knew the 1945 bottle of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, up for sale at his wine seller’s auction in New York last month, would be well received. After all, it was one of only 600 bottles of Burgundy made in a year that went down in history as the end of World War II, and was considered one of the greatest vintages of all time.
Still, it was a little shocking when the bottle sold for $812,500 – a new world record for a bottle of wine at auction, almost 50% higher than the record price the same bottle fetched in 2018. “Scarcity is what really drives the bus,” Kapon says. “When it comes to really rare and really old wines that are some of the best, people don’t care what they pay for them.”
Wines aren’t the only category of collectibles that are increasing in value at auction. Last month, the black 1969 Fender Stratocaster guitar that Pink Floyd member David Gilmour played on the band’s most famous albums, including “Dark Side of the Moon,” sold for $14.55 million at a Christie’s auction. That was more than double the $6 million record set in 2020 for a guitar, a 1959 Martin D-18E that Kurt Cobain played decades earlier on Nirvana’s “MTV Unplugged” performance. Just weeks earlier, influencer and wrestler Logan Paul sold a rare Pokémon Pikachu Illustrator card, one of just 29 created for a competition in the 1990s, for $16.5 billion – three times what he paid for it in 2021.
What these items have in common is that they are very rare, unique items that also tell a story. In the case of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, fewer and fewer bottles of the wine have become available over time, with perhaps only a handful remaining, Kapon estimates.
Acker’s Fine and Rare Index, which tracks a cross-section of 100 top wines sold at auction, rose 11% in the first three months of the year, one of the biggest jumps it has seen in 25 years. Other collectibles are seeing a resurgence at the high end: TCGplayer, an eBay-owned platform for trading cards of all kinds, said this is the case double- and triple-digit percentage increases on many rarer cards in 2025. And online musical instrument marketplace Reverb has found that in 2025, the total value of a range of high-quality vintage instruments, not just the multi-million dollar headline instruments, had risen by 10 to 30% last yearwith the rarer models achieving the largest increases. The market for unique collectibles stands in contrast to a slower-growing art market: the youngest Art Basel and UBS Art Market The report found the sector grew a modest 4% last year after several years of declines.
Collecting valuable and special objects is of course nothing new. And it’s not just rarity that drives up auction prices. It is often a story that makes something unique – and therefore a valuable item. Of the Gilmour guitar, Christie’s Nathalie Ferneau explained, “It became this mythical holy grail object, so to speak.” The instrument was part of a Christie’s auction of the collection of Jim Irsay, a billionaire who owned the Indiana Colts football team. The auction generated over $84 million in sales for 44 items and set 23 world records.
The guitar was modified by Gilmour himself, changing the neck several times and drilling holes in it. Such changes would normally diminish the value of an instrument, but not in this case, as the modifications show that this was a guitar that Gilmour had tailored himself to get the sound he wanted on these classic albums. “For a real fan, this is even more desirable,” says Ferneau.
In the case of the Pokémon card, much of its value came from its pristine original condition, certified by an authentication agency. It helped that Paul sweetened the prize by selling the card in a custom-made necklace that he wore and personally presenting it to the winner.
Not every valuable collectible is meant to be placed in a display case or resold. Wine, for example, is meant to be drunk. Likewise, guitar collectors enjoy gathering with friends and actually playing their prized possessions rather than treating a multi-million dollar guitar like a Monet painting. “It’s a great conversation piece,” says Martin Nolan, managing director of auction house Julien’s, which sold the first guitar for $1 million in 2015.
Another possible factor in the rise of collectibles: Truly unique pieces offer the super-rich a chance to compete in a sea of sameness when it comes to high-value personal goods. “Traditional luxury goods are losing their luster,” says Silvia Bellezza, a marketing professor at Columbia Business School and a former LVMH executive. “The 1% are distancing themselves from this kind of good, and what are they going to do next? They’re not going to stop signaling. They’re going to do it in a more sophisticated way.”
