Splint Invest experience: How to invest in Rolex & Co. with just €50

If you want to make your finances less dependent on price movements on the stock market or you are worried about inflation, alternative investments can be a useful addition to your portfolio.

With Splint Invest, a young Swiss start-up now offers the opportunity to invest in real collector’s items: simply via app and from as little as €50! An exciting starting point and motivation for us to take a closer look at the Splint Invest platform – and to invest in art and wine with our own money.

With our Splint Invest experience, we show you how the Splint Invest business model works, where we see the advantages and disadvantages and how you can invest your first Splint risk-free in a luxury good of your choice.

Promo code “SFB60” and preliminary remarks on our Splint Invest experience

Splint Invest convinced us, which is why we entered into a cooperation with this young Swiss start-up.

This article is based primarily on our own research and experience. Splint Invest CEO Aurelio Perocca provided us with first-hand information on topics that required some insider knowledge.

Like any investment with high potential returns, investments in alternative investments are also associated with risks. Speaking of risks: With the promo code “SFB60”, Splint Invest will give you €60, which you can use to test the platform risk-free with a real investment. You will also be supporting our blog.

Questions? Just write them in the comments below. We’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

– Partner Offer –

Disclaimer: Investing involves risks of loss.

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Alternative investments

For those of you who are new to alternative investments, we have summarized the most important facts about this/these asset class(es) in this chapter.

What are alternative investments?

As the name suggests, these are alternatives to traditional asset classes such as equities or bonds. Alternative investments are often characterized by the following features:

• Weak correlation with traditional asset classes or even contrary market development
• Low liquidity or long-term capital commitment
• Increased profit and loss potential

Examples of alternative investments established on the market are:

• Hedge funds: Actively managed investment funds with the aim of achieving returns regardless of the financial market situation
• Private equity: Direct investments in unlisted companies with growth potential
• Real estate: investing in “concrete gold” (see also our article “Real estate ETFs: the easiest way to invest in concrete gold”)
• Commodities such as wheat, oil or precious metals

Collectibles or luxury items are less well known, but are also alternative investments. This is what this article is about.

Why should you invest in alternative investments at all?

In terms of comprehensive asset diversification, alternative investments can complement traditional asset classes such as equities or bonds well.

Adding alternative investments can make your own portfolio more resistant to stock market turbulence and interest rate fluctuations. This reduces the dependency on conventional investments and the associated market developments and opens up new potential return opportunities.

About Splint Invest

Brief history

Splint Invest is a Swiss start-up based in Zug, which was founded in 2021 by two private investors and auditors, Aurelio Perucca and Mario von Bergen, among others. They were motivated by the realization that many private investors, driven by negative interest rates, stock market turbulence and rising inflation, were desperately looking for alternative investment opportunities.

After a test phase among friends, the app went live in February 2022. A good two years later, the platform already has over 14,000 investors (!) – and the trend is rising sharply.

Splint Invest is a so-called financial intermediary. As a member of the self-regulatory organization VQF, Splint Invest is audited annually for compliance with money laundering regulations.

How does Splint Invest work?

Splint Invest is based on an app. You can use this platform to buy digital shares in alternative investments. These alternative investments are currently limited to collectibles or luxury items.

Specifically, you can invest in Rolex watches, Bordeaux wines, whiskey barrels or fine handbags, for example, which gives you co-ownership of these objects.

The special thing about Splint Invest is that it makes these collectibles accessible to a wide audience. Until now, this type of investment was mainly reserved for the very wealthy. With Splint Invest, however, you can purchase shares or so-called splints for as little as €50 .

What amounts are involved?

We see a major advantage with the alternative investment from Splint Invest in the very low entry hurdle. As already mentioned: You can join with just €50 – with the promo code “SFB60” you even get it for free, which is effectively a risk-free investment.

Incidentally, the average amount invested per person is €380 per month or a cumulative €22,000.

What fees are charged by Splint Invest?

Let’s start with the positives: There are no custody fees or other hidden costs with Splint Invest. There is also no withdrawal fee when you transfer the proceeds from the sale of Splints back to your bank account.

Splint Invest only incurs transaction-related costs when buying and selling splints.

The purchase price of splints already includes the so-called platform fees and any external management costs. These costs are calculated once over the entire investment horizon and vary depending on the investment object.

When you sell an installation, you will also be charged a flat-rate fee of 2% of the sales price.

To help you decide, we recommend that you find out exactly what fees will be charged before you purchase an investment. You can do this easily and individually according to the planned investment amount via the app.

What are splints?

A splint is a digital unit that defines the co-ownership of a physical asset. A watch worth €20,000 is therefore divided into 400 splints of €50 each. If you buy four of them, you own one percent of the watch.

How are splints taxed?

Splints are tangible assets under Swiss law. The value of the splints reported at the end of the year is added to the assets in the tax return. An investment with Splint Invest is therefore subject to wealth tax.

How does the interaction between experts, platform and investors work?

Splint Invest operates the platform, selects external partners and validates their expertise according to data-based criteria. If Splint Invest comes to the conclusion that the external partner is trustworthy and the collector’s item on offer is fairly valued, it is purchased and offered on the platform as an investment object.

How is the expected return determined?

Together with the external experts, an investment horizon and three scenarios are defined for each property with regard to the expected performance: a defensive, a balanced and an offensive scenario. These forecasts are largely based on historical data or returns and sales prices achieved in the past for comparable properties.

During our test phase, we noticed that the expected annual returns are often over 10%, but vary considerably from property to property. For example, the expected return as at March 13, 2023 for the active offers for the balanced scenario ranges from a moderate 7.3% (Scotch whisky barrel) to an impressive 22.0% (David Hockney painting).

In the next chapter, you will find out what real returns have been achieved through sales to date .

When will they be sold and what real returns have been achieved?

In principle, the following applies: If an offer is made before the defined investment horizon that corresponds to the offensive scenario, then a sale is made (see illustration below). Otherwise and as a rule, the sale process is started from the beginning of the investment horizon, i.e. based on the balanced or offensive scenario. The ordinary investment period varies from property to property within a range of two to over ten years.

By the end of October 2024, Splint Invest had completed a total of six sales and the resulting net returns, i.e. after deduction of fees, are really impressive.

If no suitable purchase offer is received within the defined sales range (usually 2 – 3 years), the sales process is continued. In this case, offers that correspond to the defensive scenario are also accepted.

As an alternative to these sales organized by Splint Invest, you can also sell your shares in the investment property yourself. Splint Invest offers a secondary market, the so-called marketplace, where splints can be traded within the Splint Invest community on a monthly basis. We will go into more detail about the Splint Invest marketplace later.

Where are the goods stored?

Storage is a factor that should not be underestimated when it comes to the performance of the asset. Splint Invest places correspondingly high quality demands on its partners in this regard. Currently, for example, watches and handbags are stored in the vault of the Berner Kantonalbank in Bern, while whisky barrels and wine bottles are stored in state-supervised bonded warehouses (e.g. in London).

What tangible assets can you invest in?

The range of alternative investment opportunities is constantly being expanded, as are the higher-level categories. The following categories are currently available (sorted by introduction, oldest category first):

• Whisky
• Watches
• Art
• Wine
• Handbags
• Rum
• Diamonds
• Lego
• Miscellaneous (e.g. precious metals, sneakers)
• Digitized rights
• Luxury cars
• Private equity

As with equity investments, the same applies to this asset class: in order to achieve the best possible risk/return ratio, it is worth diversifying as broadly as possible across several property categories.

Outlook: According to CEO Aurelio, the range of alternative investments is to be expanded over the next few years to include private equity (short-term), venture capital (medium-term) and real estate (focus on infrastructure projects, long-term).

How does the registration process work?

The registration process is super simple and takes less than a minute: enter your name, e-mail address and a password. A welcome e-mail is generated immediately, which must be confirmed. That’s it!

After registering, you can redeem the promo code “SFB60”, which will credit you with €60 . This amount can only be transferred back to your bank account after it has been invested.

Verification of your identity is only required once you have purchased a total of 10 splints or more, i.e. from an investment amount of €500. You confirm this with a valid ID document and a selfie in the form of a short video sequence. This purely digital process took us around two minutes.

In principle, anyone aged 18 or over who is resident in Europe or has access to the app can register.

How do I transfer money?

At the time of publication of this article, transfers are only possible in euros – other currencies such as CHF, GBP and USD are planned.

Money can be transferred via bank account (individual or standing orders possible) or by credit card. However, debit cards are not accepted.

What is the app good for?

Let’s get straight to the point: We have rarely come across such an informative and yet extremely clear app. Compliments Splint Invest!

You can download the app for free from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. We have tested the latter.

The app is available in German, English and now French. The actual content is divided into the following five sections in the menu bar:

Category “Investments” or Stefan’s first purchase

This is where the music plays and the voyage of discovery begins! You can make an initial selection using the filter function, including by status (all, active, available soon or sold out), yield or term.

Stefan decides on an object with the highest possible return potential and the shortest possible investment horizon – and finds what he is looking for. He invests his first split in a painting by the artist David Hockney.

The value of this painting from 2010 is estimated at an impressive €156,000, resulting in a total of 3,123 splints. At the time of purchase, 42% of the splints were still left. As Splint Invest reported on request, there have not yet been any slow sellers after around 100 purchases. This means that a purchase is usually completed within a few hours to a few days at most.

And lo and behold: barely invested, the artwork has already increased in value by 0.6%! The increase in value is based on the monthly revaluation of all the investments on offer.

Incidentally, there is no autopilot investment function, although this is planned.

News” section

The monthly performance updates, including a market outlook, should be of particular interest to investors. The news articles also include interviews with external experts and introductions to individual team members. The content published to date is characterized by careful preparation and a high information content.

Dashboard” section

This is about the company’s own investments. The cumulative market and nominal values as well as the changes in value are displayed. To assess the diversification of your own portfolio, you can also see how many categories and investments you are invested in (see image below, right-hand print screen)

Category “Trading center”

Investors can offer their splints for sale on the trading platform. This secondary market is open once a month for four to ten hours. The price is determined by the person selling. However, in order to avoid abuse and unwanted transactions, the offers must be within realistic ranges. These ranges are defined by Splint Invest.

And indeed, the price bands imposed on the selling party are conservatively defined and hardly exceed the market price determined. At the lower end, however, Splint Invest tolerates large discounts. A typical price range for a Splint with a determined market price of € 52 would be € 29 – € 55, for example.

Splint Invest also advises against early, speculative sales. This is because such a strategy is often associated with a loss of returns. Instead, you should generally only use the trading venue if you are unexpectedly reliant on liquidity.

Stefan purchased a Splint for €48.50 for the first time via the trading platform on 10.8.2023, for a Rolex Sky-Dweller . This offer was therefore €1.50 below the original price and corresponded approximately to the market value determined by Splint Invest at the time of purchase. Since then, he has regularly bought splints via the trading platform, often when they are offered below market value, for which there is a practical filter.

As CEO Aurelio confirmed on request, the majority of offers have so far been successfully completed or new buyers have been found quickly.

Profile” section

In addition to personal details, there are also interesting things to discover in this section. Numerous explanatory videos are available in the FAQs. If you still have unanswered questions, you can also formulate your individual question in the chat in this section. We did this several times and always received a satisfactory answer within the promised 24 hours.

A small drawback: Unfortunately, the response is sent by email and there is no way to retrieve the requests in the app, let alone a ticket system where you could track communication with support.

Our conclusion about the app

The app positively surprised us in terms of its functionality, clarity and information content. Whether purchases, transactions via the trading platform, explanatory videos or questions to support: all interactions can be conveniently controlled via the app – without any paperwork.

What are the risks?

We see the greatest risk with this alternative investment in the financial loss. Such a loss results if the sales proceeds are lower in real terms than the amount invested. Unfortunately, there is currently no corresponding track record to make statements about past losses.

Important: On the other hand, a possible bankruptcy of Splint Invest does not represent a cluster risk on the investor side. This is because the “luxury items” do not fall into the bankruptcy estate, but remain the property of the investors. In addition, all goods offered are insured against theft and damage.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of Splint Invest?

Conclusion from our Splint Invest experience

Alternative investments such as splints can better diversify and thus stabilize your own portfolio as an addition. We were convinced by this special asset class and its successful implementation, which is why we will supplement and further expand our portfolio, which consists mainly of equity ETFs, with splints. We will do this on an ongoing basis over a longer period, but without exceeding the limit we have defined of a maximum of 5% of our portfolio value.

But before you invest in splints, you should have a good feeling. Yes, that may sound trivial. But we think alternative investments are all about trust. With the still young start-up Splint Invest, the question of trust is even more important. Even though the first sales and exits have been successfully completed, there is still no meaningful track record of the sales prices achieved or the estimated returns.

We are encouraged by the fact that the collector’s items advertised so far have found buyers quickly – often within a few hours. In addition, the secondary market already seems to be working well.

In other words: Only if you are convinced that Splint Invest’s business model is serious and promising should you consider investing in this alternative asset class. Apart from the crucial question of trust, we believe that splints are particularly suitable for people who are in the asset accumulation phase, have a longer-term investment horizon and attach importance to at least one of the following three factors:

• Better diversification and fewer fluctuations in value in the portfolio, as alternative investments often move in the opposite direction to the price and interest rate trends of traditional asset classes.
• Higher potential returns than with traditional investments, as collectors and lovers of luxury goods are prepared to pay irrationally high prices, depending on the object. It should also be noted that higher potential returns are always associated with risks of loss.
• More emotion when investing in Rolex & Co. than in traditional investments such as shares or bonds.

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Updates

2024-11-01: New table with all sales to date and details of the returns achieved added.

2024-04-09: Mention of previous sales, completion of the investment categories, multilingualism of the app and increase of bonus to 60.

2023-09-04: Stefan’s own experiences as a buyer on the secondary market have been added to the topic “Trading place”.

Disclaimer

Disclaimer: Investing involves risks. You must decide for yourself whether or not you want to take these risks.

Errors excepted: We have written this article to the best of our knowledge and belief. Our aim is to provide you as a private investor with the most objective and meaningful financial information possible. However, should we have made any errors, forgotten important aspects and/or no longer have up-to-date information, we would be grateful if you could let us know.