What are the most unusual investments that have yielded the biggest returns? Data journalist JULIETTE O’BRIEN looks at the category leaders and has found a pattern.
Niche investments appeal to small, specialised groups. They are volatile and highly speculative. They also have the potential for explosive wealth creation.
Venture capitalist Peter Thiel says you can either invest in atoms or bits, referring to physical or virtual worlds.
What are the most unusual investments in the universe and metaverse that have yielded the biggest returns?
The sheer dollar amount paid is one obvious metric. But while these assets are wildly unpredictable, a simple calculation of the average annual growth rate tells us the value-creation time frame.
We found the latest known values (what someone paid for it) and sale dates for category leaders in niche assets. We plotted them with the dates they were brought into existence.
Leonardo Da Vinci’s ‘Salvator Lundi’ – the most expensive piece of fine art ever sold – is the runaway leader by price. But Da Vinci’s painting took more than 500 years to reach that value.
The most expensive car, a 1963 Ferrari 250 GTO, was 55 years old when it sold for US$70,000,000.
Bonkers investments that have yielded the biggest returns
| CATEGORY | ITEM | LATEST KNOWN VALUE (USD) | AVG ANNUAL RETURN % |
| FINE ART | ‘Salvator Mundi’ by Leonardo da Vinci | $450,312,500 | 0.2% |
| DOMAIN NAME | Business.com | $345,000,000 | 11.0% |
| ARTISTIC NFT | ‘Merge’ by Pak | $91,800,000 | 100% |
| JEWELLERY | Pink Star Diamond | $71,200,000 | 5.6% |
| ANTIQUE CAR | Ferrari 250 GTO | $70,000,000 | 1.8% |
| SPORTS MEMORABILIA | Baseball Card ‘Topps Mickey Mantle’ | $12,600,000 | 1.4% |
| COLLECTIBLE CARD | Pokemon Card ‘Illustrator Pikachu’ | $5,000,000 | 4.2% |
| COMIC BOOK | Action Comics #1 | $3,200,000 | 1.2% |
| SNEAKERS | Kanye West Nike Air Yeezy 1 ‘Prototype’ | $1,800,000 | 7.7% |
| GAMING NFT | CryptoKitty ‘Dragon’ | $1,300,000 | 100% |
| PARKING SPACE | Parking space at The Peak, Hong Kong | $1,300,000 | 20.0% |
| WINE | Chateau Petrus 2000 | $1,000,000 | 4.8% |
Contrast those with non-fungible tokens (NFTs), unique identifiers recorded in a blockchain. NFTs have sprung into the millions of dollars within a year of their creation.
CryptoKitties is a blockchain-based game that allows players to buy, sell, and breed digital cats. Now, that’s niche. The game launched in 2017, and in the same year, a purple kitty named Dragon sold on its marketplace for 600 Ether, worth US$1.3 million at the time.
Digital artist Pak set the world record for an artistic NFT sale with ‘Merge’ in 2021.
Nearly 29,000 collectors spent US$91.8 million in a buying spree that lasted 48 hours, racking up units in a shared artwork that would merge into dynamic NFTs, becoming scarcer.
The speed at which these digital items attract massive investment shows the meteoric value of bit-assets.
As the digital revolution continues to unfurl, fortune favours the niche.
FOOT NOTES
- Values sourced from the latest recorded sales on public record.
- The most expensive Wine listed here was the Chateau Petrus 2000, which spent a year on the International Space Station. This excludes the Avenue Foch 2017 Champagne, which came with an NFT artwork on its label ($2.5 million).
- The most expensive Sneakers listed here, Nike Air Yeezy 1 ‘Prototype’, exclude the OVO x Air Jordans made from gold.
- The Business.com origin date used in Domain Name is based on a WhoIs re Name ord creation date of 1998.
