Why Alternative Investments?
Historic Returns
10% market returns per annum from stamps & autographs provide the perfect platform to diversify your wealth.
Rare stamps have always been a good investment, legendary investor, Bill Gross knows this all to well, after turning his $2.5 million stamp collection into a $9.1 million profit, "It’s better than the stock market" was Bill's response to his land mark investment.
Throughout the world there are estimated to be over 48 million stamp collectors, with countries such as Brazil, Russia, India and China becoming heavily involved with the hobby. It is the passion of these collectors that underpins the investment as we operate in the most basic of supply and demand markets – as supply diminishes (rare pieces cannot become any less rare), demand increases with more and more collectors entering the market.
The SG100 Index, which is updated monthly, shows the performance of the 100 most popular stamps traded across the world. This index, which Bloomberg added to their indices website in 2007, measures the performance of the 100 most popular and traded items across the world, enabling investors to compare performance with other asset classes.
As well as the stamp index, we also trace 100 of the top autographed pieces in our Fraser’s 100 Index. The index shows prices from 1997 and gives an average of the percentage growth in value to current date. In 2008, the index showed a cumulative increase of almost 280% for the 100 items over the last 11 years and an average compound increase of 12.9%.
Click here to see the current index.
Malcolm Forbes of ‘Forbes Magazine’ highlighted the potential of autograph investment when he said:
“In My view, they are the most undervalued of all areas of collecting, especially when you consider what people are paying for even second rate paintings.”
This also applies to the world of rare stamps. The number of truly rare stamps is exceptionally small. Indeed, at any one time we have over 3,000,000 million stamps in stock. On average, 136 may be considered to be of investment grade.
Rare stamps and autographed pieces are also perishable. The last couple of years have seen the destruction of a number of high value stamp collections, including one worth over £200,000 that perished in an Australian bush fire. Some of the rarest pieces are often bought by or donated to museums, thus diminishing the supply of such items even further.