Jailed Vietnamese tycoon’s Birkin bags sell for more than $550K

Two luxury handbags confiscated from jailed Vietnamese businesswoman Truong My Lan have sold for more than $535,000 (£399,000) in a government auction.

Both found new owners in just 30 minutes of bidding - one of the white Hermès Birkin bags alone fetched $440,144, with the other selling for $94,858.

Hermès’s exclusive Birkin bags can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The disgraced tycoon is serving a life sentence for embezzling from a major Vietnamese bank and has been ordered to return $27bn in reparations.

Truong My Lan was sentenced to death in April 2024 after a court found that she had secretly controlled Saigon Commercial Bank, the country’s fifth biggest lender, and taken out loans and cash over more than 10 years through a web of shell companies, amounting to a total of $44bn.

The sentence was commuted to life in prison last June, after Vietnam abolished the death penalty for a range of crimes.

During her trial, Truong My Lan had tried to hold on to her two Hermès bags, telling the court that she had bought one of them in Italy and the other was a gift from a Malaysian businessman. She said she wanted to leave the bags as “keepsakes” for her children and grandchildren.

In January, Ho Chi Minh City’s Civil Judgment Enforcement Agency said that it was seeking experts to appraise the value of two crocodile skin Hermès Birkin bags seized from Truong My Lan.

The bags were among 1,200 seized assets to be sold at the Ho Chi Minh City Asset Auction Service Center on Monday, according to local media.

The bag that sold for the lesser price was a size 30. The more expensive bag - a size 25, was embellished with rhinestones on the clasp and trim - went for nearly seven times the starting bid.

Nicholas Parnell, founder of Agency Parnell, a wholesale luxury fashion agency, said the price of Birkin bags had been increasing year-on-year “for a long time”.

“It is one of one of the most sought-after bags and that has been achieved primarily by Hermes restricting access to people,” he said.

Parnell said the handbags themselves were “pieces of art” and “extremely rare” and were considered investments by many people.

“It becomes something you cherish and hold on to,” he said.

“The price is quite limitless in a way because there are so many special editions.”

Auction house Sotheby’s advertises the bags for tens of thousands of dollars each.

Sotheby’s Paris sold the original Birkin bag for €8.6m (£7.4m; $10.1m) in July 2025, making it the most valuable handbag ever sold at auction at the time.

Source: BBC

--Agencies