Auction Advice: Why it might be an idea not to open your luxury Advent calendar

As we turn into the home straight before Christmas, thoughts turn to Advent calendars, and recent years have trumped all others for stretching the imagination and resorting to the ridiculous.

The media have rightly been making quite a thing about the commercial exploitation of this corner of the festivities: Asda’s cheese calendar a few years ago was just the beginning. What about the Edinburgh Gin calendar, complete with 25 miniatures, or the Diptyque limited edition calendar filled with skin and bodycare products? My favourite example of over-the-top nonsense was the one Porsche put on show in Harrods around 2009: retail price $1m.

It’s all a far cry from the calendar’s rather restrained origins in Germany in the 19th century. Simple images posted behind the doors of a cardboard calendar dominated for decades until the first chocolate-filled calendars started to appear in the 1940s.

The market has now turned full circle, with reproductions of the traditional vintage German calendars available for sale.

Although there is quite a market in Christmas collectibles, Advent calendars remain a rather muted corner of it, but with the variety on offer now, especially some of the more unusual, limited-edition varieties, this is an area of collecting whose potential has yet to be fully exploited.

The worst I have come across for 2026 is the 24 Days of Ugly Medieval Cats Advent Calendar.

My tip is this: anyone who can keep one of the exclusive Liberty London Beauty Advent Calendars in mint condition might well find themselves with a very valuable collectable on their hands in a few years’ time. They may retail at well over £200 now, but untouched may be worth as much as ten times that in another decade or so. Just a thought…