![]() ![]() They're buying it for X and holding onto it in the expectation of selling it for Y. It's almost a balance sheet thing to them. They're interested in flyable aircraft but they're not flying them. This new breed of vintage aircraft investor is “interested in the rarest of the rare-the German WWII aircraft. They are all former car investors and they're investing in airplanes because they feel that the car market is tapped out," Brown says. "For years we've had enthusiast pilots collecting and flying these airplanes, but in the last two years the market has moved on to investors. Increasingly, however, the love of plane is being replaced by the love of gain. Investors are grabbing up rare WWII warbirds like this $2.6 million Vickers Supermarine Spitfire. Allen's collection recently moved into an 88,000-square-foot display space in Everett, Washington and was officially rebranded the “Flying Heritage and Combat Armor Museum.” Weeks' “Fantasy of Flight” collection, housed in Polk City, Fla., once numbered more than 150 aircraft. Major collectors like Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, oil-royalty scion Kermit Weeks, and Jerry Yagen, the driving force behind Virginia's Military Aviation Museum, have dominated the “rare birds” scene for years. Brown says the owner recently turned down an $11 million offer for the airplane, which is quite remarkable considering that these planes sold for a few hundred dollars, not even their scrap value, in the years right after the war, with some still trading for tens of thousands of dollars through the late 1970s. Brown knows a collector who has an Me-109 documented to have seen action in the epic Battle of Britain, the Anglo-German air war that was at its most torrid in 1940 from June to October. Right now you can buy a Spitfire for 1.8 to 3 million pounds ($2.33 to $3 million) and that makes it historically cheap,” he says.īrown’s firm has among its offerings a 1944 Goodyear FG-1D Corsair for $4.1 million, and a rare two-seat Messerschmitt Me 109G for $7.59 million. It is very cheap for an American to buy a plane overseas, and this is sort of an historic reversal. “The European market is very hot right now. Brown says such funds typically buy in $4 million to $5 million blocks, not huge amounts, but it’s still enough to drive up market prices.īut the trade also flies in the other direction, particularly since the dollar’s appreciation post-Brexit. He says he has recently sold such vintage aircraft to funds in Australia, Italy, and the U.K., but is barred from revealing their identities due to the non-disclosure agreements he signed. Simon Brown’s company in Los Angeles, Platinum Fighter Sales, moves 20 to 25 of these collectible war aircraft annually. ![]()
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