Why the Two Calculators Disagree, and Both Are Right
Put the same item through the two valuation tools on this site and you get two very different numbers. That looks like a bug and it is the most useful thing either of them tells you.
A $2,000 luxury piece, 5 years old, in excellent condition. The depreciation calculator says $1,181. The resale estimator says $602.
The same item, both ways, four tiers
| Brand tier | Depreciated value | Retained | Resale estimate | Retained | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry | $741 | 37.1% | $189 | 9.5% | $552 |
| Premium | $941 | 47.1% | $360 | 18% | $581 |
| Luxury | $1,181 | 59.1% | $602 | 30.1% | $579 |
| Ultra | $1,391 | 69.6% | $887 | 44.4% | $504 |
The gap is enormous and it is consistent: across every tier the resale figure is roughly half the depreciated one.
What each tool is actually measuring
Depreciation answers "what is this thing worth now?" It takes the retail price and reduces it by a fixed percentage a year — 10% for a luxury piece, 18% for an entry brand. It is an accounting view, and it is the same maths used for a car or a laptop.
Resale answers "what will somebody pay me for it?" It starts from the same age curve and then applies two further reductions: the brand's tier base, and the condition.
Those are different questions, and confusing them is the single commonest mistake in reselling.
Where the missing half goes
Two places, and neither is negotiable.
The retail markup. A luxury piece's tier base is 60% — meaning even a brand-new, unworn item resells at about 60% of its ticket price. The remaining 40% is the shop, the marketing, the boutique rent and the brand's margin. None of that comes back, because none of it was ever in the object.
Condition. Excellent rather than new-with-tags multiplies by 0.85, a further 15% off. An item that has been worn is a used item, whatever it looks like.
Multiply those together — 0.6 × 0.85 — and you get 51% of the depreciated value, which is precisely the ratio in the table.
Which number to use, and when
Use the resale estimate to decide whether to sell. It is what a buyer pays, and it is the only figure that competes with keeping the item. What lands in your account is less: run it through the consignment payout calculator. On the site's tiered example schedule the $602 sale above pays $421, a 30% commission, before any shipping or authentication fee your platform adds.
Use the depreciation figure for insurance and for deciding what to protect. If a piece is stolen you are out its value, not its resale price, and the two differ by a factor of two.
Use both when buying. The gap between them is what you are paying for the privilege of buying new — and it is the entire argument for buying the piece secondhand instead.
The ranking survives the disagreement
Notice that both tools agree on the ordering: ultra holds best, entry worst, and by a wide margin either way. $887 against $189 from the same $2,000 — a factor of 4.7.
So for comparing two candidate purchases, either tool ranks them the same way. It is only the absolute number that differs, and only the resale one is money.
And then the platform takes its share
The resale estimate is the sale price, not the payout. Sell that $602 coat through a consignment platform and the payout calculator returns $421 — the platform keeps 30%.
So the honest chain from a $2,000 ticket price to money in your hand is $2,000 → $1,181 worth → $602 sale price → $421 received. That is 21.1% of what it cost, and it is the number worth knowing before the purchase rather than after it.
What neither tool claims to do
Both are built on broad rules of thumb, and both say so. A specific item can beat its tier badly — a discontinued colourway, a collaboration, a piece that becomes fashionable again — and a few categories appreciate outright, which neither model attempts to predict.
What they are good for is the shape of the thing: that markup is unrecoverable, that condition compounds with age, and that the tier decides most of the outcome before you have chosen anything else.
The two models are the same model underneath
Compare the depreciation calculator's retained percentage with the resale estimator's age factor and they match exactly, tier by tier. That is not coincidence: the resale model's per-year retention is one minus the depreciation rate, for all four tiers.
So there is really one age curve on this site, wearing two hats. The depreciation tool shows it alone; the resale tool shows it multiplied by the tier base and the condition.
Which makes the comparison unusually clean. The ratio between the two answers depends only on the tier and the condition — never on the price or the years — so once you know your item's tier you know the gap for every future question about it.
What this means for a purchase decision
If you are buying with any intention of reselling, the depreciation figure is the wrong number and will flatter every decision you make. The resale figure, minus commission, is the money.
On the luxury example that is $421 against the $1,181 the depreciation tool reports — a difference of $760 on a single item, and the difference between "this holds its value well" and "this cost me $1,579 over five years".
A rule for reading either one
Worth is what the depreciation calculator reports. Use it for insurance, for deciding what to store carefully, and for arguing with yourself about whether to keep something.
Price is what the resale estimator reports. Use it to set a listing.
Money is the payout after commission. Use it for every decision that involves actually parting with the item.
Three numbers, three purposes. Almost every mistake in reselling is using one of them where another belongs.
Try it on your own item
Take something you own, find its approximate retail and tier, and run it through both. The two answers will be roughly two to one, and the lower one is the one that turns into money.
Most people are mildly shocked by the resale figure and then find it useful, because it converts a vague sense that "designer holds its value" into a specific number that can be argued with.