Jailed Vietnamese Tycoon’s Hermès Birkin Bags Sell for Over $535,000

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

Both handbags found new owners within 30 minutes of bidding. One white Hermès Birkin bag alone fetched $440,144, while the other sold for $94,858.

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

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 she had secretly controlled Saigon Commercial Bank, the country’s fifth-largest lender, and had 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 attempted to hold on to her two Hermès bags, telling the court she had bought one in Italy and received the other as 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 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, 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 the most sought-after bags and that has been achieved primarily by Hermès 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.