Collecting, taste and the things people choose to make part of their lives.
The year’s trophy purchases have little in common except scarcity. Set side by side, they show how the very rich now price things that exist in a quantity of one.
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OB / 02Rounds of golf in South Korea have fallen since the pandemic boom. Memberships at a handful of clubs near Seoul have gone the other way, and now trade like prime property.
OB / 03Sales of big yachts are rising in value while more than 2,000 smaller ones sit unsold and the price cuts pile up. What the numbers say about who is still spending.
OB / 04Distillers are cutting output as 1.4bn litres of Scotch sit maturing. On 9 October Sotheby’s holds its first sale at a distillery, led by a bottle of Macallan 1926.
OB / 05From the Grandmaster Chime to Paul Newman’s Daytona: 100 remarkable watch auction results, ranked by historical US-dollar value, with photographs, stories and sources.
OB / 06Ten remarkable car auction results, with photographs, the stories behind the individual cars, original sale prices and auction-house sources.
OB / 07One hundred of the highest prices paid for paintings, ranked in 2025 dollars after inflation, with each artist, sale year and nominal price.
OB / 08Meet 100 women with extraordinary estimated fortunes, ranked in a dated snapshot with sources of wealth and links to the underlying profiles.