I’ve been buying designer handbags my whole life and my £25k collection is my pension

SARA DAVIES, a teacher, lives in Ross-on-wye, Gloucestershire, with husband Jonathan, 52, and children Toby, 14, and Cerys, 10.

Here, the 40-year-old shares her love for designer clobber and reveals that her £25,000 designer handbag collection is her pension.

Standing outside the Louis Vuitton shop on New Bond Street in 1998, I tried to pluck up the courage to go in.

I’d got the train from my home in Gloucestershire to London, but had no idea whether you were supposed to ring a doorbell or just walk inside. All I knew was the bags in the window were making my heart race. 

Aged 18, I’d spent the past four years saving, getting up at 5am every Saturday to work at my local bakery – purely so I could get a Louis Vuitton bag. 

My purse was stuffed with £20 notes that I used to buy a classic monogrammed cross-body bag for £500. It was the most expensive thing I’d ever owned, and my three sisters thought I was mad.

My mum, Anne, then 34, was a stay-at-home mum and my dad Keith, then 43, was a foundry worker, and while we went on holiday once a year, there wasn’t money for luxuries. 

For the next four years after my first purchase, I saved everything I could from my meagre salary as a receptionist so I could buy more bags.

I was only earning £8,000 a year, but I also kept my Saturday job at the bakery so I could pay my rent and have money left over to save.

I made sacrifices, saying no to nights out and saving the money I would have spent. I’d even go camping rather than flying abroad on holiday. 

Finally, in 2002, I had enough money to splash out on a £1,000 suede Dior bag with a rose on the front. 

I loved the way it made me feel – elegant, glamorous and proud of my hard work.

After that, I started slowly building up my collection, buying more Dior and Louis Vuitton bags – and I’ve been collecting ever since. I’ve always paired my designer bags with high-street clothes, however.

I met my husband Jonathan, a project manager, in 2004 and we got married three years later.

On our wedding day, he gave me a red Hermès Kelly bag, which cost around £6,000. Unfortunately, I find it a bit too boxy so I keep it safely in its dust bag, as it could now be worth about £9,500. 

When my daughter Cerys was born in 2009, I bought a limited-edition LV bag made that year to commemorate her birth, and have done the same for my stepdaughter Gabrielle, 21. I’ll pass them down to the girls one day, as my son Toby prefers trainers!

Bags aren’t like cars that drop in value as soon as you buy them – if you take care of a handbag, it will often increase.

Sometimes, I’ll sell a bag on a specialist website such as Catawiki.com and buy new ones with the profit. 

Around 2014, the vintage market boomed, and that’s when I realised how investable designer bags can be. 

Now, instead of buying new, I’ll invest in a vintage piece I think will go up in value from an auction house.

Usually, I make at least a couple of hundred pounds per sale, but I sold one Hermès bag for £8,500 after paying £4,000 for it.

I keep track of what my bags are worth by monitoring how much the same model sells for, and have alerts set up at online auction houses.

I now own 29 luxury handbags, which are worth around £25,000 in total. My dream piece is a Louis Vuitton vintage travel trunk from the Titanic era, but these sell for about £30,000. 

Since my husband earns a good salary, and I trained as an English teacher in 2007, we live comfortably. But it’s reassuring to know that if I needed money quickly, I could sell a bag.

I don’t see the point in a savings account. Interest rates are so low, and I’d rather have a bag that brings me joy and I can sell on if need be. I keep my most valuable ones in a safe and they’re all insured.

Despite how much they’re worth, I still use most of my bags and even let my daughter and stepdaughter borrow some of them. I used my first Louis Vuitton bag until it was falling apart, then Cerys used it for dressing up. 

In the past, people would keep their money under their mattress – but I keep mine in the form of handbags in my wardrobe.”

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