I suspect the comments about box leather might be a case of survivor bias. More box bags have stuck around long enough to be refurbished, while more delicate leathers don’t show up on the secondary market because they just didn’t make it.
That was my criteria for the three bags - so much data that it helps to have someone summarize, could find the information in a google search, and needs a deep dive.
The two biggest challenges with Penelope is that for a while, people would call Penelope a Christine (Penelope is a 70s rigid, square envelope clutch/shoulder bag with a button closure vs Christine which is an 80s envelope clutch/shoulder bag with a tapered top, slouchy profile and a snap closure.) And Penelope was only made between 1971 and 1978, and only appeared in one advertisement as far as I’ve been able to find.
Weirdly enough, I found a lot more data points when I did a Google image search rather than the shopping search - the three sold bags from TRR showed up ($625, $825 and $1125 for the currently available one).
When I did an image search based on a photograph of the bag, I found Penelope sold as “Hermes Envelope” bags, including one that sold on Rebag in 2021 $1800, and in a Virginia auction house in 2023 for $200, along with three bags currently listed on 1st dibs ($1550), Vestiaire ($993) and Poshmark (1499)
Which leads me to conclude several things 1) I should be shopping more in tiny auction houses, 2) Chat GPT could be far more effective if it asked for clarification (“are you looking to sell your collection or get an estimate for insurance?”), 3) Older bag names are being forgotten, which makes bag appraisals more challenging (the CS auction data all dates from 6 months to three years after the Penelope ad was posted in the “Hermes in Print” thread on this very forum…)
How on earth did you find that? I thought I googled everywhere.
