Five items this week. The pre-owned premium goods market is large enough to confirm that quality physical goods hold value across decades, a market signal rather than a cultural preference. Titanium supply geography mirrors rare earth concentration with the same structural risks. Platinum’s secondary supply is expanding as higher prices make recycling economics work as intended. Renewable desalination has crossed a cost threshold that makes manufactured freshwater competitive with depleted groundwater in water-stressed regions. And the IMF’s reserve currency data shows a multi-decade, sovereign-level shift away from dollar concentration that confirms what commodity prices already show.
- The global pre-owned luxury goods market reached approximately EUR 50 billion in 2025, growing at roughly 10 per cent annually, with the strongest value retention concentrated in goods with functional longevity including mechanical watches and quality writing instruments.
Bain & Company’s annual luxury study with Altagamma tracks the personal luxury goods market and its pre-owned segment, which has grown at roughly double the rate of the primary market for five consecutive years. The pattern is consistent across specialist resale platforms: goods manufactured to functional rather than fashion specifications, mechanical watches, quality hand tools, carbon-steel and cast-iron cookware, show lower depreciation than fashion or electronic goods because their value derives from function rather than novelty. A Pelikan M800 fountain pen in continuous production since 1987 trades on secondary markets at prices equivalent to or above original retail in real terms. A Rolex Submariner purchased new in 2010 trades above its original retail price in nominal terms. The mechanism is straightforward: goods made to a standard that outlasts a single owner accumulate scarcity value as production costs rise and the manufacturing skill required to make them does not diminish.
Why it matters: The pre-owned market does not lie. When resale prices track or exceed original retail, buyers at first issue are acquiring something at or below its demonstrated long-run value. The case for physical assets is not that all old things are valuable, but that things made to a durable standard in finite quantities behave differently from disposable goods when supply tightens. The data point here is at market scale, not individual preference.
Source: Bain & Company / Altagamma Luxury Study 2024 – Bain & Company; Chrono24 Watch Market Report
- China’s share of global titanium metal production has risen to 75 per cent in 2025, up from 40 per cent in 2019, leaving Western aerospace manufacturers structurally dependent on imports while US domestic sponge production remains offline since 2020.
Project Blue’s analysis identifies a geopolitical vulnerability: Western aerospace demand will reach 1.6 million tonnes by 2044, yet supply remains concentrated in China and Russia, with over 90 per cent of global titanium rutile diverted to pigment rather than aerospace-grade conversion. US response includes American Titanium Metal’s USD 868 million facility in North Carolina (operational target 2027) and Timet’s West Virginia melting expansion, though these projects operate on multi-year timelines. The pattern mirrors rare earth supply concentration: the processing and refining chokepoint lies downstream of mining, and moving it requires years of capital and specialised infrastructure.
Why it matters: Titanium is a critical material for defence systems and commercial aerospace, and its supply geography has shifted sharply toward a single country in six years. New capacity requires multi-year timelines regardless of urgency. For buyers of goods containing titanium alloys (precision tools, watch cases, medical implants) the structural picture resembles rare earths: the concentration exists, the alternatives are being built, but the timeline is measured in years rather than quarters.
Source: US must ramp up titanium capacity to avoid squeeze – MINING.COM / Project Blue; IEA Critical Minerals Market Review 2026 – IEA
- Platinum recycling supply is forecast to expand approximately 10 per cent year-on-year in 2026, with secondary supply from European spent automotive catalysts covering over 40 per cent of European platinum group metal demand and investment demand at levels not seen since 2007.
Secondary platinum supply growth is driven by higher precious metal prices improving recycling economics for end-of-life catalytic converters, particularly in Europe where post-Euro 6 vehicles carry higher PGM loadings. Industrial platinum demand is recovering after 2025 contraction, projected at plus 9 per cent year-on-year. State-of-the-art processing can achieve over 95 per cent recovery of platinum group metal content from spent materials. The World Platinum Investment Council’s quarterly data shows the simultaneous growth of both industrial demand recovery and investment demand, with ETF and coin demand at multi-year highs.
Why it matters: Platinum demonstrates the case for secondary supply as a real market variable rather than a rounding error. When prices rise, the economics of recovering platinum from existing materials improve, drawing latent supply back into the system. This is price signals working as intended. For buyers of physical platinum, a secondary supply base of this scale means the depletion narrative is more complicated than primary mining data alone suggests, but it does not resolve the primary supply picture in South Africa and Zimbabwe.
Source: World Platinum Investment Council: Platinum Quarterly – WPIC; International Platinum Group Metals Association
- The cost of renewable-powered seawater desalination has fallen approximately 80 per cent over two decades, with the International Renewable Energy Agency tracking costs below USD 1 per cubic metre at modern solar-driven reverse osmosis facilities and next-generation graphene membrane technology under development.
IRENA analysis of the energy-water nexus tracks the falling cost of renewable desalination, which has moved from a high-cost last resort to a competitive water source in coastal water-stressed regions. Solar-powered seawater reverse osmosis now operates at costs competitive with freshwater abstraction in parts of the Middle East, North Africa, and southern Europe. Next-generation membrane technologies using graphene and nanostructured materials are in pilot stages, targeting further reductions in energy consumption per cubic metre. The IEA identifies desalination as a strategic response to falling groundwater tables in regions where precipitation alone cannot sustain demand.
Why it matters: Water is a physical constraint that no monetary policy can resolve. The falling cost curve for manufactured freshwater reduces strategic risk in water-stressed regions but creates a new dependency on energy infrastructure and materials. As with solar power, the cost of the technology is falling while the physical scarcity driving demand for it is not. The constraint shifts from the technology cost to the energy and materials required to run the systems at scale.
Source: Renewable Energy Desalination – IRENA; Water-Energy Nexus – IEA
- The US dollar’s share of global official foreign exchange reserves has declined from 73 per cent in 2001 to approximately 58 per cent in the most recent IMF Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves (COFER) data, with no single alternative currency absorbing the shift and gold and diversified real assets growing proportionally.
The IMF publishes COFER data quarterly, tracking how central banks allocate their foreign exchange reserves across currencies. The dollar’s share peaked at approximately 73 per cent in 2001 and has declined to roughly 58 per cent by 2025, a 15-percentage-point structural shift representing trillions of dollars in reallocated sovereign wealth. The euro holds approximately 20 per cent, the Japanese yen around 6 per cent, and the Chinese renminbi approximately 2 per cent. The remaining shift has moved into gold holdings, SDRs, and currency basket arrangements, with central bank gold purchases running at approximately double their pre-2022 baseline through 2025.
Why it matters: Reserve currency composition is where sovereign-level decisions about monetary stability are made. The IMF’s own accounting confirms a multi-decade structural diversification away from dollar concentration. This is not a crisis signal – the dollar remains the dominant reserve currency by a wide margin – but a 15-point decline in 20 years is a structural trend, not noise. For buyers of real assets, the relevant point is that central banks have been doing at sovereign scale what the real asset thesis argues individuals should consider: reducing currency concentration in favour of finite physical assets.
Source: IMF Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves (COFER) – IMF