Chicago wine company will come to your house and pick everything up, i believe then sell on consignment
I sent them a list of about 300-350 bottles. Didn’t even get a response. Must have a crap cellar. Ha!
To echo what others have said here, based on the wines you have noted I would think just about any major auction house in the US that specializes in wine would be very interested in your list. Many auction houses now run regular monthly internet auctions in addition to periodic live auctions- and the former is where a lot of smaller lots of very good, and even A list, wines get sold. It is also worth approaching retailers that do outright purchases of cellars- with Benchmark and Chambers Street being my two most favored options based on history.
On the issue of consignment to a retailer- I do not recommend that generally unless you are going to get at least 75-80% of the sales price. Worse still, there are operations out there which will quote you really dreamy numbers, but then sell your wines on consignment with you only sending them bottles as they are sold. Bad deal for you and not much of a deal for the buyer either who is not getting the benefit of the bottles having been fully vetted in person first. I am not going to name names publicly, but a couple of the most frequently seen retailer names on winesearcher operate in this manner.
The reason I do not recommend consignment to a retailer is that certain things will sell far more quickly than others, and unless you are getting a much bigger take of the total price than is customary in a buyout deal (which is very unlikely to happen), you are basically giving a retailer the opportunity to let their customers cherry pick what they want- and with you potentially stuck with unsold wine after a few months. 20 years ago, this might have been your only option in some cases- but today there are enough properly capitalized operations with large customer bases to make outright purchases at good rates. That invalidates the need to even consider consignment.
Most important of all- if you decide you want to sell the entire parcel to one person, do just that- don’t let anyone go through the list first and hand pick things. Experienced brokers and resellers make offers on an entire package- I have never seen bottles itemized- but I have sold or assisted in the sale of enough wine over the years that my estimates are usually within 5% of the best offers received, and when making those estimates bottle by bottle- my estimated percentage discount from eventual retail varies a lot depending on how much in-demand each given wine is, as well as the overall ratio of high-demand bottles to the entire collection. Well-meaning friends may offer you strong prices near retail for your cherries- but if your overall parcel offered to brokers is lacking in those same cherries, that can have a serious impact on the total offer you receive above and beyond the proportionate value of those cherries.
It is also important to consider the legality of transactions when you are getting into selling a large collection like this. An auction house or broker with proper licensing can legally retrieve, or even have mailed via common carriers, your bottles and transport them in a legal manner that allows for full insurance. At some point or another, many of us do the odd trade with friends- but when you are liquidating a cellar, keeping things very simple and very proper is not only safest but tends to yield the best overall outcome.
HDH and Heritage are both easy to work with.
Great advice from Tom. I learned a few new things. Don’t get cherry picked!
I guess the real question on selling a large cellar is how to get the best price. Hugely dependent on quality of storage and specifics of bottles, yes. But I’d guess it would be pretty easy to move the kind of cellar described by the OP.
Does anyone have experience or data on price comparisons among options for such a cellar? Again just guessing but I’d bet that you’d get the most $$ from a major auction house, but it would be slow. Sale to a big retailer like Benchmake would yield fewer dollars but be faster. Consignment seems like a low quality choice in terms of speed and value in today’s market.
Umm…to me…
That is part of the analysis and outreach that either a buyer or hired consultant has to undertake on a case by case basis.
Many times what you are saying is very true- you trade more money for speed. However, on the broker/retailer side a lot depends on what they have in stock and what their customers want. When you get up into the higher reaches of A+ blue chips, it is not uncommon for a broker or retailer to offer more than recent auction- sometimes quite a bit more- if they have a specific client or group of clients who want the wines in question. It is all a game of cash flow- the longer you expect to potentially be stuck with the wines, the lower the offer because you will have capital tied up in those bottles. Also, if you have a very important and steady client whose loyalty is dependent upon you (as a broker/retailer) delivering consistently on blue chip requests- you might pay more and take a smaller profit on individual deals in order to keep that big client happy long term.
Again it varies by collection- but looking at back at all the cellars I have evaluated where I was also asked to refer the collection to buyers (which is a completely separate thing from appraisal), when selling all or most of a cellar at a total expected take of $100k or more- typically there will be 3 venues total; a combination of brokers and auction houses depending on current market conditions and what wines might be of special interest to a particular broker at a given time.
I know this is a vague and general comment of little use, but when I used Benchmark through CellarTracker, I knew they’d need a decent cut to make it work for them. So, I wasn’t looking for retail. Instead I opted for convenience and speed. On the next round I may look at them vs. K&L as I may wish to take my time and wait for K&L to auction for me. Two cents.
Speed of payment in the auction market is clearly very market dependent. When I first got into auctions, the big players were running 6-7 auctions a year, with months passing between dates. Now most run monthly, with additional smaller/Internet only events thrown in (see HDH, Zachy’s, Acker). K&L is continuous. With the market this hot the calculus of timing and amount is certainly changing.
Winebid was easy for me 10 years ago. The seller’s premium has gone up, but not by much and they ask for less than HDH. The nice thing was they handled everything once I dropped it all off and if you’re just wanting to unload it all…that seems like it would be the easiest. I think I started getting checks 4 or 6 weeks post bidding. If all else fails you can always instruct them to drop everything to $5/bottle and watch the wines go in one or two auctions.