Before you buy a rack of any kind, stand next to it and imagine it loaded, not empty. An empty coat rack looks elegant in a showroom and ridiculous the day it's holding four winter coats, a backpack, two tote bags and someone's gym stuff. Same with a cart or a metal shelving rack, the one that looks sturdy bare can wobble the second you stack it with actual plates and cookbooks. Ask yourself what it's holding on a normal Tuesday, not what it's holding in the photo in your head.
These things have real limits, and it's worth saying them plainly. A slim wall mounted hook strip is wonderful for keys and scarves and absolutely useless for a heavy wool coat, it'll pull out of drywall or sag at the screws within a season if you didn't find a stud. A tall freestanding coat rack is great in an entryway with floor space to spare and a genuinely bad idea in a narrow hallway where it'll get knocked sideways every time someone's carrying groceries. Carts with wheels are brilliant for moving things room to room and not so brilliant on thick carpet, where they either dig in or just sit there refusing to roll, which defeats the point of having wheels at all. And none of these do well in a room that's already busy with pattern or clutter, a black metal rack against a wall full of framed photos and other metal finishes starts to look like a hardware store aisle rather than a room.
How they age depends almost entirely on the metal and the finish, not the shape. A good powder coated black rack shrugs off scuffs and fingerprints for years, you can wipe it with a damp cloth and it looks the same as the day it arrived. Cheaper chrome or bare metal shows every mark, rusts if it lives somewhere damp like a mudroom or a bathroom, and the welds on the flimsier ones start creaking under weight within a year, a sound that tells you everything about the build quality before anything actually breaks. Wood shelves on a rack will take water rings from wet boots and umbrellas if you don't give them a tray or a mat, so plan for that rather than being surprised by it later.
When it's delivered or you're standing there in the store, check how the thing actually joins together, not just how it looks standing still. Give it a shove side to side, a rack with wobbly legs or hooks that spin loose in their sockets will only get worse with real use. Check the weight rating if it's listed, and don't trust the generous end of it. Run a hand over the welds and edges for anything sharp enough to snag a coat sleeve. And count the hardware bag before you throw out the box, because missing screws are the most common reason these things end up leaning against a wall unused for six months.
Wipe metal racks down with a dry cloth regularly and they'll outlast whatever you're hanging on them.