Hi All - Not sure this is the right place for this post but wasn’t sure exactly where it would go. I had some bottles of wine I wanted to sell and I got an offer from Benchmark Wine Group. Leaving a little review of the process in case people find it helpful:
I had some wine; I emailed them with pictures and they wrote back the next day with an offer;
I disappeared for a few weeks (vacation) and then resurfaced, asking to change the terms slightly (not selling the whole lot and therefore different price); they again wrote back promptly (2 days) and agreed;
Within 24 hrs we had finalized the deal and they sent a DocuSign as well as shipping labels.
The one thing that gave me pause is that I had to ship the wines and they would pay within 15 days of passing inspection. I shipped the wines on the 11th and they arrived the 13th. That meant payment was due the 28th. They cut the check on 9/26 and it arrived a few days later (around the 30th).
My obvious concern was send the wine and it needing to be “inspected” before they would confirm the price and send the money. I understand why they do it that way but it did feel like a risk. But everything went well.
I know it is a bit of rolling the dice when selling wine to someone you don’t know like this so I thought I’d add this data point. Hope it helps.
Do you mind disclosing what you sold to them? I’ve not had good experiences with them on the wine sales front. It seems to me that, unless you are offering them more than $10K worth of wine and/or are shipping locally to them, they aren’t interested.
Strange, based on these messages I double checked to make sure I had the right company! It was Benchmark Wine Group, benchmarkwine.com. I sold them $1000 of wine at a little under 70% of the WS average. I had a couple of other offers around 60% which is why I took the offer.
I know this is old, but was hoping for some more insight about Benchmark. my Family < Mother > is selling the wine collection my father collected over the years. We got a 6figure offer from Benchmark wine group depending which way we go. We also have offers from Christie’s and KnL. All great offers, Benchmark is right in middle. Its a good offer, but its about 40% below WS value. Friends in wine industry are telling us to wait, or sell on winebid.or sites like here or private sells. Only difference, they wanna taste test 6 bottles first. Mother is leaning towards Christie’s.
Benchmark has a lot of good will on the retail side. It’s the first place I look for anything with age. Excellent customer service. Surely the acquisition side of the operation is just as well-run.
I have had good experience with Flickinger which sells on a consignment model. Wine is taken into their warehouse, posted on site and sells over time as people buy the bottles.
I don’t know what you are selling but reach out to them and they can likely give you a valuation and epected net proceeds.
I will check them out, But im on the west Coast 5 hours north of Napa n Bay area. We have Dunn, Caymus, Heitz, Silver oak, First growth Bordeaux. Duckhorn, Beringer, just to name a few. Im just trying to get understanding of what we have and market value, WineSearcher, i wish was true to value, Is about 60% above what we are being offered.
I cant complain with them as person im in contact has basically walked me through each step. As we are more then likely going through Christie’s < its the Mothers decision, im simple helping.> I wanna just make sure whatever decision we make will be best one for her. Its a collection with life changing money involved.
I think most of these operations are operating in the 30-40% below market range. They have to have room to mark up and cover expenses, salaries, etc. As is often pointed out here, particularly for non-current release wines, wine searcher is essentially the price at which bottles don’t sell well, otherwise those listings wouldn’t be there. I would consider maybe 5-10% below WS pricing, than 70% of that a reasonable offer. You can probably make a bit more selling individual bottles or cases here, or at auction if they are bigger, more desirable names. In the end, the question is how much time and effort do you want to put in for a modest increase in what you get back? At some point, particularly in a situation like this, it may make sense just to take the easy route, get a check, and be done.
I am a big fan of Benchmark, both as an appraiser and as a consumer, and they make solid offers. When I help someone sell a collection, I will ballpark the estimated asking price first and Benchmark usually comes in within 2-3% of where I come out- often much closer.
Three key things to know,
Much of the time, one good broker will make a solid offer on everything, but the bigger and more diverse the collection, the greater the odds you can do a little bit better by splitting it up and selling it to 2-3 different brokers, or sending some to auction and selling the rest to brokers. This is where a really good appraiser/referral broker can earn their keep and then some. It is all about knowing the market very well and knowing who most wants what at a given moment.
I strongly discourage the consignment model. This is a great way to sell the most desired/popular wines quickly but then get left with a whole lot of stuff that is going to be harder to sell or will sell for a lower % of retail. Broker offers are almost always a flat number for everything- nothing is ever itemized. This is because in reality they are going to make a smaller margin on higher dollar/higher demand wines they can sell quickly which will offset a much larger margin on lower dollar items and/or things that may take time to sell.
And for anyone tempted to do consignment first and then offer the rest to brokers or auction houses later- my advice is, don’t do it. People who have been in this business a long time can tell when they are getting offered leftovers. Often they will not make an offer on such collections. And with the consignment model, you are not making that much more per bottle- if anything- on what sells. All you are doing is assuming all the risk.
Person to person sales for a large collection are also problematic. There are legality issues for a start, plus there are a lot of buyers out there looking for people who do not know what they have and make really low ball offers. The worst case I ever encountered was in a divorce where the collection needed to be sold quickly. I was brought in to give a second opinion on a $40K offer. Splitting the collection into 3 parts and selling it legally, I got the client $90K- and took a $3K fee for my efforts. The difference can be that big. You also run into the same issue as with consignment- if you let people hand pick from a list, you are likely to find yourself with lots of unsold wine that has to be disposed of for pennies on the dollar.
Winebid is a very good place to sell. They are very selective about provenance and will report even the smallest issue in the auctions, but buyers appreciate that and your results will not suffer if a label has a torn corner or a small scratch etc that would not get disclosed in other venues. It is true that for a long time they were better for very specific ranges and types of offerings- and while they still have certain core strengths, they have now been for several years a place where you can sell just about anything and get a good result.
Disclosure to be fair- over the past decade there is hardly an auction that has gone by that did not have either things of mine or of a client for sale. Take it as the ultimate vote of confidence- but I do also have an interest here.
Thanks Tom, I know ill def use them for our single Bottles we own. I sent them our list yesturday, Now its just the waiting game to hear back, But they were on top of it even on a Sat. We do have a few bottles with slight label issues, rip here or there. few smudges yes, We feel pretty good though about what we have. If not, ill be drinking alot and sharing alot of old vintage wine! Ya never know world
