hello again!!!!!!! vous m’avez tous manqué !

(I don’t speak French but wish I could!)

My week/life/sense of self hasn’t been the same since Timothée’s Vogue cover dropped. One thing we can all agree on: it was... colorful. Which brings me to my latest existential and data-driven crisis:

All else held equal, does color affect resale value?

BEFOREEE YOU READ, let’s run a little experiment and don't cheat!!!!! (or do, idc). But leave a comment with your gut instinct:

1. Yes, some colors materially perform better than others
2. No, color doesn’t really matter 📉

(Cringe, I know. “LeAVe A cOmMeNT” like I’m a 2012 D-List YouTuber doing a haul. But I get lonely writing these, so humor me!! 😭🤪🫠)

how i did it (without losing my minddddd)

We want to isolate the effect of color only on resale price. To do that, I grouped listings that were identical in every other way: same brand, model, size, condition, and material.

Think:

• chanel || classic double flap || medium || excellent || leather
• louis vuitton || neverfull tote || GM || very good || canvas

Each of these combos became its own little “comparison pod.”

Then, for each pod, I calculated the average resale price. so what that exact bag sells for on average, no matter the color.

Next, I looked at how each color stacked up against that pod’s average.

So if the average Chanel Classic Double Flap (Medium, Excellent, Lambskin) sells for $7,500 and the same bag in pink sells for $7,175, then pink = –4.3% (or at a discount) relative to that group’s average.

Capisce?! (She's sooooooo multilingual today)

I repeated that for every color in every group, and then averaged those differences across the entire dataset (204K listings). That gave the true market-wide color premium: how much more (or less) each color tends to sell for when everything else is identical.

This avoids the rookie mistake of just comparing all black bags to all pink bags (aka comparing Hermès to Coach (no nameshaming!! no tea, no shade!!). It just wouldn’t be statistically sound if we didn’t account for that.

what did we find chr*s ?!

“Premium %” = how much more (or less) a color sells for compared to identical bags in other shades.

color	premium %	sample size
White	+6.82%	26,275
Black	+3.31%	62,791
Green	+2.68%	4,541
Brown	+0.94%	62,762
Neutrals	-0.74%	25,052
Blue	-1.26%	14,324
Grey	-1.66%	4,755
Yellow	-2.56%	1,319
Pink	-4.08%	7,917
Purple	-4.57%	1,255
Red	-8.76%	11,459
Orange	-10.19%	1,029

• Whites at +6.82% ... maybe because no one actually uses their white bags enough to ruin them lol ThE CoLOr tRAnSfeR!!!!! but for real though.
• Black made sense. Like duh. The little black bag is always in vogue ;))) (not the full circle reference).
• Green gave me pause. I’m guessing it’s more “sage and olive brunch-core” than “radioactive Granny Smith” or “Kermit goes to Coachella.” (I could check, but honestly? I’ve come too far to dive back into code now.)
• Pink, red, orange...? The resale market said “um cute for you but not for me!”

I hate to say what we're all probably thinking but the numbers are generally in support of quiet luxury propoganda. The phrase on every influencer's lips. Not just a trend, but an ROI strategy (JOKING, not financial advice LIKE STOPPPPPP)

But this is worth diving deeper..... does this hold true brand by brand? Because come on:

🧡 Hermès Orange… myth orrrrr?

🖤 Chanel Black… the color is in their DNA

🤎 LV Brown... no comment needed.

I'll break it down by brand next but pausing here for a breath before hitting the codebase even HARDER.

Until next time xx