Helen Nugent

How to slay your investment returns: spend money on things you love

When I moved to Manchester from London a few years back, I hummed and hawed over what to do with my VHS collection of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. With seven series and a total of 144 episodes, carting them more than 200 miles north was no small undertaking. In the end, I took them with me. Fast forward to 2013 and I’m at the local animal charity shop with said collection. The advent of Sky On Demand had negated my need for a roomful of Buffy videos. I was sad to see them go but glad of the extra space in my house. Now I discover that pristine copies of cult VHS tapes are worth a few bob. Admittedly, I never owned Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks (widely considered to be the most valuable VHS in the world) or The Beast in Heat (£1,200 to the right buyer) but, like many children of the 80s, I’ve amassed a sizeable stash of clunky cassettes. eBay beckons. New research reveals that there may be an audience for the interests of my youth. A study by Lloyds Private Banking shows that investors are increasingly driven to invest in their hobbies and pastimes. In fact, one in six investors holds collectible investments in their portfolios. Meanwhile, Lloyds’s research also shows that investors are willing to part with large sums of money for things they love and have no intention of selling on. On average, £13,500 is spent on a single investment, with one in ten spending more than £50,000 on an individual item. While jewellery is the most popular collectible asset, classic cars came out on top as the most expensive at an average of £34,500 per investment. This is followed closely by antiques (£32,500) and whisky (£27,700), which was revealed as a more expensive choice than fine wine (£20,300). Out of the 11 asset classes surveyed, racehorses attracted the lowest level of investment (£15,000). Data from Lloyds Bank However, investors who don’t have a spare £20,000 to spend on a stamp are finding that investing in their hobby doesn’t have to break the bank.

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