I actually bet they do pretty well. All of us on here have some sense of what a given wine is worth. If we look on W-S and see only one listing with Cask Cartel, which is many multiples what we believe the wine is worth we question its validity.
Now imagine you’re very wealthy, but have limited wine knowledge. You’ve just gone to a dinner party and had something for the first time that you loved. You look it up on W-S and see only one cask cartel listing, $800, and buy because you liked it that much, and have no frame of reference that it’s actually a $200 bottle.
I imagine in scenarios where they’re the only listing they probably actually sell more than we might think, taking advantage of people who don’t know any better and laughing as they take their 80% margin to the bank.
The reality is, for most people what they believe a wine is worth is determined by what the retailer sets the price at and in scenarios where there is any scarcity of the wine, determining market value can be exceedingly difficult. I have non-wine friends talk all the time about particular bottles of whiskey or wine they saw in a shop that had a $10k, $20k $50k pricetag. Is that actually what it sells for? Or just what the retailer set the price at for prestige sake, but has not sold any.
Another example. There are some large production labels here in Ontario that sell in the premium wine section for $30 CAD. I can think of people who would consider that “nice” wine. The same bottle sell in US grocery chains for $12 USD, and in that context people might consider them every day bottles. Context informs perception. My hypothesis is Cask Cartel does well in situations where they are the only context for a wines value.
If I were cask and cartel (the Cartel name should alert you) I would have more than one alias for the same wine. The first is the stupid F you price, then a second a cheaper one that looks good by comparison.
The more I think of it, the more my little inner villain thinks it can work a fiddle by overpricing and exploiting the naive. It is not just selling, which if they can do it hugely profitable (particularly if they haven’t already bought it) but how you can leverage high prices to sell the same stock.
I wonder how much this sort of thing pushes up some release prices across W-S, when it is one of the only listings on something that’s already fairly rare.
You can see that they are basically relisting wines available at wine shops overseas - down to the punctuation errors (see image below). Once you place the order, they must then purchase the wine directly from the overseas source, and capture the margin
It surprises me that W-S allows them to stay on the platform. Just seems an outright scam, even if it’s a legal one. Certainly diminishes the value of the W-S marketplace and inflates the averages in way that undermines trust.
You’re right, but look at some of the averages where cask cartel is one of two sellers. It’s clear they’re not excluding any values presently. At the end of the day, it’s probably faster and easier to just remove them too
I absolutely despise companies with this type of business model, I sincerely hope they crash and burn.
It’s easy to ignore them in W-S searches, but their offers still show up in the plug-ins, in particular in CellarTracker’s side bar. I wish there was an option to exclude them there as well.
I do some work for an insurance company. One of their policy holders had a leak in his cellar which damaged some of his wine. His claim used Cask and Cartel prices. The auction prices I supplied them was about 20% of the claim.
Have you ever seen these guys? They often show up in the search results when you search for a particular wine on Google. And they charge 3-5X what everyone else charges for the bottle. Right now looking at 2005 Jadot Ursules. The US based sellers are less than $200 (Vinfolio is $185). Cask Cartel is $689.95.
They call themselves ‘The worlds largest and most trusted premium spirits marketplace’ — which has to count for something, right?
they source from the secondary so it’s whatever egregious mark up joe didecided to list it for plus their mark up, none of it is ever truly in a warehouse ready to order
