I was outbid on 2 small Prum lots. i really question their decision to make so many lots with huge numbers of bottles. If some of those lots were split in half I would have been more of a bidder.
Robert hit the nail on the head. There was one bidder who wanted everything and didn’t care about price. He basically bought every Prum lot. I thought the prices were high when you add in roughly 37% to the hammer price for the vig and taxes. Last year I bought directly from the estate at lower prices many of the same Reinhold Haart wines that were offered last night.
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I mentioned before that when I was sending wines to auction, estimates were far too low given my perception of value.
Again, it was really just one bidder. I wouldn’t take the hammer prices as a sign of anything other than one person of means really wanting just about everything that was offered from 4 or 5 of the producers.
That’s interesting as I almost put a small group together to bid on the Haart lots, but my Ackeritis kicked in. I love the complexity and filigree of the PG Spatlesen, especially with age.
Not to be argumentative, but I believe you have to add in 32.375% rather than 37%. I’m pretty sure their vig is 24%+8.375% sales tax.
I’m not sure I agree with you, I generally agree with most of your posts but with Germany it seems that there is literally a handful of producers that bring significant $$. Beyond those producers I believe I am in Mark’s camp that my perceived value is far greater than the broader markets. You could buy a myriad of world class wines with 20-40yrs of age on them for maybe $60/btl all in (vig/tax/shipping) and often well below that number.
-paul
My mistake. I thought the vig was 28%.
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Not really accurate. Of course it depends where you live, but if you live in NYC, then the effective rate is a hair over 35%.
If your sales tax rate is 8.375% the calculation is 24% x 1.08375 + 8.375% which is 34.385%.
Sales tax is calculated on not just the hammer, but on the buyer’s premium as well.
How can you have one bidder? All auctions need at least 2 people bidding to make it past the reserve.
A single bidder won (almost) every Prum lot, as well as many of the other highly desirable lots. I didn’t mean to imply that only one person bid. I meant to imply that one bidder was repeatedly willing to pay more than everyone else. That implies an idiosyncratic valuation by one person rather than a more broad-based belief that the estimates were underpriced.
I would also add it seemed like it was not a very deep auction of bidders. I watched lot after lot go by at the low estimate then a lot I bid very high on would go one tick past my bid including the aforementioned lot that went close to 300% above the high estimate which was exactly one tick above my bid.
Ray is correct.
Anyone have a link to the auction results?
They will be online in a few weeks. I wrote down hammer by hand live during the sale- so please feel free to PM if you want data for a few specific lots.
FWIW- I indicated things are on the rise. I get that one’s perceptions can exceed what the market will bear- but the fact is that 10-15 years ago if you wanted to sell a lot of German wine the options were very limited. The wines now routinely sell in online auctions and have been increasingly present- albeit at the top levels- at live auction.
A group of friends, including me, placed an above high estimate bid on a Zilliken lot and got smoked.