I am thinking about selling a limited number of early 90s GC Burgs to help finance a nice cello for my daughter. My wife won’t complain as much about a 30-40K instrument if my wine hobby helps subsidize it 
. I wanted to see which auction houses folks are having the best experience with as sellers, i.e. a good combination of customer service, prices realized, fees, etc. Most of the threads I’ve seen over the last few years relate to the buying experience, which is very good info that I am factoring in.
Not sure if I would feel comfortable sending that much wine to wine.bid. Reach out to HDH in Chicago.
George
Flickinger has great customer service and I recieved very good prices for wine I consigned.
Stan, I’d probably go HDH if I wanted to realize the maximum potential and it is of sufficient quantity that they would deal with it.
However, there is an auction house in our back yard (Leland Little) that might make things a bit easier since you could drive the wine over yourself, negotiate terms in person, etc. I’ve never done business with them and don’t know their wine director but there may be an advantage to dealing more locally.
With small amounts of wine, I generally do business with NY retailers that I have a history with.
Why not ask several auction houses and have them compete for your wine.
HDH has been doing very well for consignors both in terms of sell-through and prices realized. And they are honest, trustworthy folks.
+1
Consider Benchmark as a brokering possibility. It all depends on current trends and what they currently have in inventory, but they generally make very competitive quotes plus you get your funds a bit sooner.
For selling at auction- most of the major houses that conduct live on-site auctions provide a searchable database of recent results. To “thin the herd” so to speak, your best bet is to look up recent sale results for some of the bottles you are looking to sell.
HDH has its strong points, but everyone has their strengths and weaknesses both in certain areas and with their fee structures. It is important to consider the seller’s commission you pay (which will vary a great deal and sometimes be zero). Most top wines have relatively stable markets and sales trends. If one house is charging you a 12-15% commission and another is charging 0%-5%, that is worth taking into account.
Thanks guys. HDH has had such good feedback from buyers here I figured they were likely looking after consignors equally well but I hadn’t seen it addressed. Nathan that’s the only catch, it’s not liquidating a cellar and only $25K or so and not hundreds of thousands of dollars, so will need to see how that affects terms. Winebid has done a great job for me with smaller lots in the past but I had a hunch that a traditional auction house may be more appropriate for expensive older Burgs. Time to start making some phone calls.
Tom it’s interesting you mention Benchmark - was looking earlier at some pricing on winesearcher, Benchmark is showing a bottle of '91 Rousseau Chambertin at $5K, and I’m like holy crap is someone really going to pay anything close to that? I had a bottle for my birthday a year or two ago but for that kind of money I almost wish I hadn’t.
Seller’s commission is negotiable and is likely to be lower with larger consignments. The multi-million dollar cellars get the press but $25k is not peanuts either.
I like the advice you were given to send your list to several outfits and ask their terms.
Big +1 - the guys at Flickinger are great to deal with and very consistent. Unless what you are planning to sell make up some good solid auction type lots, it may make more sense to go with a consignment approach.
Rousseau did an amazing job in 1991, but no I would not pay anywhere near $5K for a bottle- though that is what the market will bear. His 1969s sell for a fortune too, but the Clos de Beze was on the decline (though still amazing) 10 years ago.
As far as the auction and broker markets go, these days what you have matters far more than your total consignment. To give extreme examples, if you have $25K of $50-$100 CA wines to offer, there is only one really good option. But if you have $25K worth of Romanee-Conti (aka 2-3 bottles), then just about everyone will want to have a chat with you- with most auction houses willing to haggle on their seller commission terms.
The further up the price and hierarchy quality chain you go, the more important it becomes how many of the same or similar bottles the broker has in inventory or the auction house has coming up for sale. This is why it is good to scout around a bit. A few years ago I assisted in the sale of a large Schrader collection- and the offers were all over the map. At the end of the day it went to a broker that was short on Schrader and had eager customers in hand- and for a noticeably higher offer price than we received elsewhere. Only one of the underbidders turned out to be a scumbag- the rest just did not have the demand relative to supply of the winning broker at the point in time when we had the wine on offer.