Investment special: Sell your Ferraris

Here is a paradox. Study the photographs of the flats and houses being sold in London’s prime property boom and you see one minimalist interior after another. The huge, empty sweeps of marble and limestone, broken only by a solitary painting, might give you the impression that it is fashionable to declutter your life. One can imagine one of those H.M. Bateman cartoons portraying the shock and horror generated by the man who placed an ornament on his mantelpiece.

Why, then, if we are so keen to get rid of all the clutter, has the price of luxury goods mushroomed over the past decade? Chinese ceramics, the collectable sort, that is — are up 83 per cent, jewellery up 146 per cent, art up 183 per cent. Antique watches – yes, at a time when high-street sales of watches are plummeting due to people using their phones to tell the time instead — are up 83 per cent.