RICHEST BY STATE: GLEN TAYLOR
Expert advice on luxe investments.
Minnesota’s richest man made his fortune in printing and now reigns over a midwestern empire made up of NBA and WNBA teams, a newspaper and plenty of farmland.
Buy, hold, sell: Ditch Napa cabernets, snap up African art.
BUY Charles Frodsham & Co. Chronometers
For handmade quality and a sense of history, look to these recently released timepieces (about $75,000). They’ve been presold for years; get ready to join a long waiting list.
HOLD Greubel Forsey
This brand (below) offers excellent watchmaking with sophisticated design. Buy one (for a half-million dollars!) and enjoy. Someday this watchmaker will take hold of the global market.
SELL Women’s Diamond Bracelets
Ladies’ diamond-bracelet watches’ resale prices are dismal. Bling watches from Chopard and Cartier often have a resale value of just 25% of the original $45,000-ish retail price— and the situation is only getting worse as brands ask sky-high prices relative to intrinsic value.
BUY Louis Bovard Dézaley Grand Cru Medinette
Few wines are made in Switzerland, let alone exported. Snag whatever you can find and squirrel it away. Bovard’s white from Chasselas (roughly $50 per bottle) will impress even the biggest wine geek.
HOLD Cru Beaujolais
Since the underwhelming “nouveau nightmare” wines of the 1980s, many scoff at Beaujolais, but quality producers in the region make age-worthy bottles that go for $35 to $55. Hold tight on to vintages from Breton, Foillard and Lapierre.
SELL 1999–2002 Napa Cabernet
Many of these gloopy, highoctane wines (some as high as $1,000) were once wellrated but are now falling apart like a bad meatloaf.
BUY Zanele Muholi
The South African photographer’s work is making the jump from small galleries to institutions like Cape Town’s Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa. At auction her work remains below $15,000.
HOLD Hannah Wilke
Wilke’s controversial minimalist work is being reexamined alongside other undervalued female artists of the 1960s generation. Renewed critical appreciation should lead to growth; works now go for $4,000.
SELL David Wojnarowicz
This painter’s “market confidence” is high ($708,500 for “Science Lesson” this May), but there are no solo exhibitions on the horizon, so his price momentum is unlikely to be sustained.