In August 2019, Albert’s Pawn partnered with Entrupy, a luxury handbag authentication service, and began buying, selling, and making pawn collateral loans on pre-loved luxury handbags. In the months following, we have been featuring in our blogs the luxury handbag designers we buy, sell, and pawn at all four Albert’s locations. This exciting new service gives our customers in the Johnson City, Kingsport, and Bristol area the confidence to sell, buy, or pawn pre-loved designer handbags.
Sure, there are a lot of online retailers of designer luxury handbags who sell similar products at similar prices, but at Albert’s Pawn, you can inspect the handbag before you buy, and you can start enjoying it now. Buying from Albert’s Pawn means no waiting for your purchase to arrive, no concerns about it being authentic, and no shipping for you to deal with on returns.
Because we can authenticate the pre-loved luxury handbags, we can pay the highest prices for buys or pawns and customers can be assured when they purchase a pre-loved luxury designer handbag from Albert’s Pawn that it has been authenticated and can be purchased at a great price with an Authentication Money Back Guarantee.
The designers we can authenticate using Entrupy are Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Gucci, Coach, Chloe, Dior, Fendi, Goyard, Hermès, Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta, Burberry, Celine, and Prada. In this blog, we will take a look at one of the most exclusive luxury handbag designers of them all: the House of Hermès.
Hermès
Known as the Holy Grail of pre-loved designer handbags, resale values vary widely based on the rarity of the bag, its materials, and its condition. Hermès handbags are one of the few that continually increase in value over the years. In fact, it is seen as a more solid investment than gold and real estate!
For example, the iconic Birkin bag is currently selling pre-owned on many websites. Prices range from $17,550 for the Birkin Blue Electric to $95,490 for the Birken Ombre Lizzard Palladium. Who is snatching up these finds? We couldn’t tell you, but it happens. A lot. Will we see any in Tri-Cities? Probably not, but it’s fun to know about these elusive handbags of the glitterati. But first, let’s learn a little background on the Hermès brand.
A Little History
Like many of the best know designer luxury brands, Hermès owes its history to the horse bridle and harness business in the early 1800s. Thierry Hermès began his saddler workshop in Paris in 1837. Catering to the gentry, Hermès’ attention to quality and detail quickly made him a favorite among the upper crust. It wasn’t until 1900, after his son Charles-Èmile was running the business when they first branched out into leather handbags, which were more like satchels. These early bags weren’t for ladies to go shopping; they were for the horse riders to carry their belongings.
In 1922 Charles’ son Èmile-Maurice Hermès designed their first fashion handbag collection because his wife couldn’t buy what she was looking for anywhere else. Getting a foothold in the emerging high fashion world by participating in the first couture show in 1929 Paris, it launched the brand into the closets of the rich and famous. Despite the Great Depression, Hermès’ reputation grew and became known for its leather “Sac à dèpeches,” a kind of satchel that eventually became the iconic Kelly Bag.
The Kelly Bag
In 1956 the world-famous actress and Princess of Monaco Grace Kelly was caught on camera trying to cover her showing her emerging pregnancy from the relentless paparazzi with the Hermès ‘Sac à dépêches’ bag she carried. The photo became so well known it transformed the handbag’s name, and it became known as The Kelly Bag from then on. Still in production, the handmade bag takes about 18 hours to produce and is made by one craftsman who creates the product from start to finish. Demand remains so high there is a six-month to one year or more waitlist for the purse, which starts at $7,600.
Along with the Chanel 2.55, The Kelly Bag is the most sought after bag ever. That $1,000 1950s bag today is worth over $9,000 and expected to increase every year. That makes the handbag a better investment than just about anything in the marketplace.
The Birkin
In 1983, Hermès creative director Jean-Louis Dumas happened to be seated next to the English actress Jane Birkin on a long flight. Birkin told Dumas she couldn’t find the handbag she truly wanted as everything out there was so structured and formal looking. Dumas continued to ask Birkin questions, sketching out designs as they talked. The result was the soon to be much sought after Birkin Bag.
Popular from the start, the handbag reached iconic status after the character Carrie Bradshaw on “Sex and the City” brandished it around. At that time, the bag cost around $4,000. Today, that same bag costs around $12,000! If you want exotic skins and customized hardware, the purse can cost nearly $100,000. It sounds crazy, but it’s true.
Exclusivity
Because Hermès is so in demand, they give preferential treatment to the wealthy and famous, meaning most women can never get their hands on a new handbag. Enter the resale market where the rest of the population has a chance to own a Hermès bag. But because of the high price of these luxury purses, fakes are a very real possibility. Like the Rolex pre-owned market, there are some very good counterfeits out there, so be very careful if you plan to dip your toe into this exclusive club. At Albert’s, we can authentic the bag with a guarantee backed by a nationally recognized authencity service.
While we’re not promising we’ll ever have a Kelly or Birkin bag for sale in our stores, our wholesale handbag supplier may have a pre-loved Hermès handbag we can special order for you, and we do have other designer handbags so stop by one of Albert’s four locations to check our inventory or to get a pawn loan on your pre-loved designer handbag! Here are nine things to know about Albert’s Pawn in Tennessee.
Albert’s has been family owned and operated since 1927. No matter what part of the Tri-Cities you’re in we have a location to serve you. With four Albert’s Pawn locations (Downtown Johnson City, North Johnson City, Bristol, and Kingsport), getting top dollar for your items for pawn loans and finding that item you’ve been looking for at an unbeatable price has never been easier. Stop by and see why Albert’s Pawn is the premier pawnshop in the area.