Been a couple threads on this recently–seems like resale market of “luxury” goods has softened across the board.
Have a look at winebid to see what your wines (or similar) may fetch.
Depends what you have
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As David said, depends very much on what wine you’re considering selling. However, while there has been some slight softening of the market in the last year or so, it is still an excellent time to sell. The auction market is really healthy, and the slight softening has people looking for deals. Plus, while very hot regions (e.g. Burgundy) have fallen a little, they have fallen only relative to massive gains of the last decade.
And then there’s opportunity cost and other costs. How much does it cost to store your wine? How confident are you that prices will go up (or down) in the future? What will you do with the proceeds?
In an attempt to massively derail this thread, my prediction for the future: Champagne, N. Rhone, top (say, 50 producers) Burgundy will continue to escalate. Probably room for top Piedmont to grow in value as well. A very small number of German, Italian, French (other regions) could get hot but good luck predicting the winners. Every other region in the world (again, except for a tiny smattering of producers) will go sideways or decline.
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I’d say wine-searcher prices are down probably 20% on some of the top end wines that really rallied in the last few years. But one needs to remember with wine-searcher that those are offer to sell only, not actual transactions.
On wineEP, we see BBX bids regularly getting accepted at maybe, 50-70% of ‘notional market value’ - so the actual trade price is potentially SIGNIFICANTLY list price.
If I was expecting to sell a lot of wine right now, I’d hope for 90-100% of WS price, but be emotionally braced for 70%
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How would you describe the overall body of wines you’re looking to sell or to donate? Are there a lot of wines that have appreciated in value? How old/mature are they mostly? Are they more trophy/collector type wines, or more regular drinkers?
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Here is an old thread that might be of use to J Dove
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Were any of your wines purchased at Berserker Days?
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The market has largely softened considerably over the past year, based only on my observations of the K&L auctions. I will say, however, that Bdx. with some age on it seems to have held pretty well (particularly super seconds with 20 or so years on them), so you may be in luck.
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I sold a small bit of wine about two years ago. Some of the companies I reached out to wanted me to have at least $10,000 in wine unless the average bottle price was above $185. Some were ok so long as they were highly desirable wines. A friend recently reached out to the place I sold to and was told that they were only accepting collections valued over $25,000 at this time. So it does seem that the market is softer than when I sold.
I think it’s also important to note that buyers are often going to site a soft market to justify having lower prices. One person I dealt with cited a soft market on a specific wine and when I showed increased auction sales on that specific wine they didn’t budge on their price and simply doubled down on “It’s a soft market right now”. So YMMV depending on who you reach out to. I would get multiple quotes, and I would trust your gut. Sometimes if you have to sell…you have to also take a bloodbath. Waiting a few years can be a positive move (sometimes). Good luck!
How do those minimum portfolio and bottle value suggest the market is softer?
I’m not disagreeing, I just don’t know the connection there.
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Chris,
To me there was a specific wine that we haggled over where in the last three auctions the sale price had only gone up (it was about 80% higher than the release price)…yet they were citing the soft market as a reason that they could only offer me the original release price for the wine…and then they expressed frustration at my decision to pull the wine out of the offer (my interpretation may be biased).
As for the increase in buying minimums from $10,000 to $25,000; it is a business decision that shuts out smaller sales. Which to me, likely reduces the total amount of collections that they are buying. When a market will only purchase larger collections and starts to shut out sales for small collections that have a lower selling price; I don’t know that I have accurately tied those two together, but when a market squeezes the bottom and prices are declining that’s an indicator that the market is softer. I’ll use SQN & Cayuse to highlight this these are some wines that used to be highly sought after that are now less elusive. There was a time that SQN & Cayuse sold at a substantial mark-up immediately after release. Today they are easily available after release and are being sold for near (less than 10% mark-up and in some cases a loss after the selling commission is calculated) from release pricing. Looking at Champagne, this week winebid.com has magnums of 2008 Cristal @ $800/magnum. That’s 20% below release pricing of around $1,000/bottle; and that means the seller is selling that magnum for close to $664 which is a deep cut to whoever bought that wine (I saw magnums selling for as high as $1500 in the first 3-6 months of release). I’m picking here & there to make a point, but these are former and or current wine darlings. It does seem to suggest that with this information along with a reduction in Champagne sales in the US during 2023 and other wine sales data that there is a reduction in wine sales in the US (at this time). Anecdotally for the first time in over a decade I’d reduced my wine budget drastically (it will probably work out to a reduction in spending of 80% - 90%) for 2024. The last time I reduced my wine budget this much was my first year or two post Grad School while I was trying to get some financial stability. I hope this helps explain my thought process, I’m certain there are lot of rebuttals that can be made in opposition, I have no interest in a debate, but do enjoy & appreciate others sharing data that would challenge this way of thinking.
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Fascinating how mixed all the pricing indicators are. Some people think it’s time to load up on bargains, others think it’s a great time to sell. They might both be right depending on what wines they’re buying or selling.
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I just sold a bunch of first growth bottles and several next-tier wines from 2018 and 2019 at auction. the prices were down roughly 30% from what I sold the same wines for a year ago
I have the same prediction.
Welcome back, Jim!
Selling wine is a PITA, I’m happy if on average I just break-even after all transaction costs, and it can take a long while to get paid. In fact, the only thing worse than selling wine is not selling wine you don’t want anymore.
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I think the likelihood will be a continuation of lower prices to well after the election. But looking beyond that, I think it’s notable that the first growths from 2009 and 2010 are both considerably higher the first growth in the 2019 and 2020. As the quality seems to be fairly similar, there is quite a bit of upside for the new vintages.
One of the main questions is the strength or otherwise of the Chinese market . Anecdotal evidence, along with warnings about the dire state of the economy, suggest that this particular market will not be coming back anytime soon.
Who thinks this?
The logic upthread was perception of softer market = bargain hunters come out of the woodwork = more buyers = decently strong hammers. I follow the logic, but I don’t know that I agree. Bargain hunters aren’t going to bid lots up to strong hammers — just pick off bargains that might’ve otherwise passed. so perhaps there’s some insurance against lots going unsold, but that hardly makes for a “great time to sell,” IMO.
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Yep - agree.
Insurance against lots going unsold sounds about right. Not the best time to sell, but certainly not the worst either.