Which of course has nothing to do with storage problems or provenance
Huh? Pretty sure Iâve heard Winebid is the go to place for smaller lots that other auction houses wonât take.
Not when I inquired about selling bottles.
Theyâll take smaller lots, but like 10-15k minimum, so not like just a case or two unless itâs something more expensive. I donât think top wines sell really well on winebid in my experience so I would never consign them there, as I said earlier it seems to me that you can often buy stuff as cheap or cheaper at winebid as you can at other auction sites for recent vintage top burgs, itâs not a bad place to buy. Sometimes places like acker, HDH, etc get crazy prices for DRC and some other burgs, like more than retail, doesnât make much sense.
The $10k minimum value sounds about what they told me.
They gave me a bid on bottles totalling under $5,000 per their appraisal in May.
Why do you say this? I get that a seller would prefer something like HDH for high end wines, but thatâs a limited range. For everything else, which HDH, Sothebyâs, etc. wonât touch, itâs not like thereâs a ton of options to begin with.
To add to this thread: I have purchased bottles on Winebid that I then went ahead and placed back at auction after a change of heart. These never leave their GSN facility.
I believe these wines, when put back at auction, used to reflect the original provenance notes from the co-signer that first brought the wine to Winebid (so, for example, the lot would read something like: âRemoved from a professional wine storage facilityâ).
As of the past few weeks/last month, this appears to have changed. Now these lots all read: âStored in GSN professional storage; Purchased from WineBidâ. Which doesnât make a lot of sense to me and seems self defeating. I typically avoid wines that were removed from passive storage. So if a wine is marked as coming from GSN, and thereâs no way to ascertain its original provenance, I suppose Iâll just skip it. (Example below is not my lot and has no relation to me)
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That seems like a fair criticism and concern. Have you let them know that? That kind of feedback might get them to change it.
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Hadnât thought to! Just emailed them though, will update with their response.
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I prefer K&L because of their reasonable buyerâs premium. If I buy from Winebid, I have to add 30% to the price to cover premium, tax and shipping. So a $75 bottle is really a $100 bottle. Itâs a big difference because a lot of people bid close to the retail price on stuff there. Sometimes I wait for the minimum to go down.
As to condition, my pet peeve as everyone knows is black Sauternes. But that is indicative of how other wines in the cellar were stored. People who inherit a passive cellar will get top dollar with many of the wines being toast but maybe little or no outside clues.
I have learned to look through the punt of the bottle (at light coming through) and if my Bordeaux are orange and light with a ton of sediment I return them. I recently purchased some old burgs with that same transparent orange color and ton of sediment and thought âOK well maybeâ and every one was oxidized and dead. Itâs just part of the wine business.
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I also think K&L does a much better job at providing accurate descriptions of the bottles and provenance. I have not had a bad bottle yet (knock on wood) from K&L, but have had a couple from Spectrum and many from Winebid. But as Fred said, itâs part of the game.
Looks like the change was unintentional! They are going to revert provenance notes back to how they used to be. Good reminder that the wine world is small and you can always just ask people stuff.
Their response:
Hi Sam,
Thank you for the note!
The provenance notes are getting reset when the wines are reconsigned, but the original notes were regrettably voided and removed. Iâm now going back to restore the original provenance information for these lots. Fortunately we do have detailed sales history for every bottle sold, so Iâm able to restore the original provenance.
Thanks again for letting me know - please let me know if you ever have questions about a specific wine or collection!
Regards,
Paul Walker
WineBid/GSN
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Great result, Sam.
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My hit score is near 100% with a 47-bottle total. Iâve only ever purchased at WineBid. Lately Iâve been using the advanced search function with keyword âoriginal ownerâ and it helps to filter lots. I have no idea how impactful this is but at least it gives me a better peace of mind with provenance.
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Outstanding!
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I buy from K&L, WineBid and Spectrum.
I like WineBid a lot, but do agree that the shipping and the BP are on the high side (though in theory, if the market is efficient this should be accounted for in the hammer price, that might be a big if though). I think they each have their own strengths and weaknesses. WineBid typically has the most lots in any given category and is the place where youâre most likely to see weird/interesting single lot bottles of lesser known wine regions. They also are most likely to let you buy single bottles from multiple-bottle lots, so it lets you minimize your risk in the sense that you donât have to gamble $1,000 on a case of potentially poorly stored wine. I have had only one bottle come from WineBid that was heat damaged out of a total of roughly 100 bottles.
I like that Spectrum names the cellar the wines come from, so you can gather info that way. If tons of bottles from a single source look sketchy, you can avoid everything from cellar.
K&L offers cheap and quick shipping, a low BP, and has the best retail side of any of the major online auction houses.