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Luxury Auctions Surged Last Year, With Jewelry, Ferrari and Hermès Driving Record Results

The secondary market's fastest-growing categories are leaving fine art behind. Here's what rare jewels, blue-chip automobiles, trophy watches and iconic handbags reveal about where collecting is headed.

End-of-year results from the major auction houses confirmed that the luxury segment is becoming vital to expanding secondary market volume across age groups and price tiers, particularly in rising geographies. After generating over $1 billion in global sales (excluding private sales) in 2025, Christie’s luxury segment released a dedicated report outlining key trends shaping the broader luxury market, along with an outlook for what lies ahead at this intersection of the auction business and industry trends.

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With a 90 percent sell-through rate and 129 percent of lots hammering above their low estimates, luxury was not only the company’s most dynamic segment but also the most effective at attracting new and younger buyers. “Luxury has become one of Christie’s most important drivers of strategic and sustainable growth in the post-COVID years, consistently acting as a key entry point for new client engagement,” Kimberly Miller, global managing director of Luxury, said Forty-one percent of all new bidders and buyers entered Christie’s through luxury auctions, and 44 percent of participants in 2025 were Millennials and Gen Z. This likely reflects both age and price accessibility; these cohorts are also more flexible and casual in their purchasing behavior, with 85 percent of bids placed online. Categories such as jewelry, watches, wine and handbags benefit from broad cultural familiarity and span a wide range of price points, making them appealing for first-time bidders and buyers, Miller also confirmed. “For many, a bid on a bottle of wine or a special piece of jewelry provides an approachable introduction to the world of auction, drawing clients into Christie’s ecosystem where they often progress to other categories,” she noted. “Luxury also performs well across live or online channels, public auction or private transactions, and therefore appeals to a wide range of age and cultural markets.”

Notably, likely linked to the rapid growth of women’s wealth, generational transfer, demographic shifts and rising financial agency among female investors and entrepreneurs, participation by women is also steadily increasing across luxury categories. The number of female buyers grew 10 percent year over year, while total spending from female clients rose 20 percent year over year across all regions.

According to Miller, as Christie’s addresses growing collector markets in APAC and the Middle East, luxury allows the auction house to meet clients wherever they are in their collecting journey, while maintaining the scholarship and connoisseurship that defines the auction house’s brand identity.

Colored gems, pearls and vintage nostalgia

Jewelry dominated the luxury market in 2025, delivering a record year for Christie’s. Its June Magnificent Jewels auction achieved $87.7 million—the highest total for a single jewelry auction in the United States—headlined by the historic Marie-Thérèse pink 10.38-carat kite-shaped diamond, linked to Queen Marie Antoinette and newly mounted by JAR, which sold for $14 million. This was followed by the record-breaking CHF 20.5 million ($25.6 million) Mellon Blue, sold in Geneva in November, the most expensive jewel sold at international auction in 2025.

“Jewelry continues to be one of the most powerful engines of growth within Christie’s Luxury ecosystem,” Max Fawcett, Christie’s global head of Jewelry, said, noting how the category, and the broader luxury segment, is reshaping the way new audiences enter the auction world. “There’s strong growth among female collectors and rising participation across Asia and the Middle East. These clients are digitally engaged, globally minded, and driven by provenance, rarity and craftsmanship,” he added.

Although diamonds have always been a girl’s best friend, Christie’s identified a remarkable surge in demand for colored gemstones: emeralds, rubies and sapphires remain category pillars, but 2025 saw record-setting interest in other stones, most notably Paraiba tourmalines, which are expected to continue outperforming........

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