So I have seen several posts about WineBid helping you blow your monthly budgets. I have bought a single bottle from them years ago, but I am curious on a few things:
I can’t remember the exact Buyer Premium, but I thought it was something like 11-14%. For me they charge Sales Tax, so that is another 9%. Are you really finding deals on there that with all the fees included still make it worth while?
What are the types of wines that you find to be the best values? Older Cali Cabs? Lesser growth Bdx? What is it you are buying. When I look at some of the Blue chips I’m not seeing much opportunity to score any deals.
Just some questions about how you make this work for you. Thanks in advance.
Scott, the premium is 14% and like you I have to pay 9% tax…add to that insurance, and you have to pay an extra 25% more than what you bought the wine for. Having said that, there are still bargains to be had and the fact that you can find rare wines that retailers won’t have makes WB worth it for me. I also get on Wine-searcher to make sure I’m not over paying for something I can get elsewhere.
The best deals I’ve found on Winebid (and in fact, all online auction sites) are usually for wines with 10-15 years of age, low 90’s professional ratings, and not on first growths, cult Cabs, cult anything.
They usually aren’t “great deals” but excellent bottles of wines that one can’t find just anywhere these days and someone else has been paying for the storage all these years.
Similar to Steve, I always check on wine-searcher before I place a bid.
I really like aussie wines, and there are always deals to be had since the style has fallen out of favor (or so it seems).
I can pick the wines up from their warehouse near Napa, so I save on shipping, which helps me justify things.
Add 15% to the prices (14% premium + 1% insurance) plus whatever sales tax you may be charged. Consolidate your shipping to monthly and use ground if you can. I find something there almost every week. It is not the place I would go to buy a high demand item like first growths, mature Burgundies, or (insert latest culty California fad here). It is a fantastic place to find interesting bottles that would not be considered “auction grade” by the standards of a big ticket house like Zachys, Sotheby’s, or whatever. I look for wines a few years past release for which hype-driven demand has subsided, or mature wines a bit off the beaten path. Most go uncontested. Think of everything you might want to buy, save your searches, and run them every week.
Factor in your total cost – including commission, insurance, and hammer, and compare with winesearcher (pro). It’s easy to use autobid in ways that push your final price above a reasonable number, so be careful about that. But like others here, I still find good buys - if not always screaming bargains - with an emphasis on bottles that are no longer available at retail.
My very impressionistic sense is that the market for wine is improving relative to 2009, and that this too will make pricing on winebid more competitive. The numbers of bottles for sale is going up, and on wines I track I see that there are more buyers paying higher prices than was the case last year.
My experiences with winebid is that provenance problems on older bottles are uncommon. But it is very much a buyer beware experience. It is always important to keep in mind that it is impossible to know whether a bottle purchased at auction has been well-stored throughout its lifespan, even if the description indicates that it is in perfect condition and was removed from a temperature and humidity controlled cellar. Removed from is one thing. When did it enter the cellar? Was it there throughout its lifespan? Caveat Emptor.
It’s good if you are looking for bottles, and not cases.
Acker you generally have to buy larger lots.
Helps to be patient too. If you wait a few weeks, the prices drop if it doesn’t sell.
Ian - you point to an important issue with Winebid. It’s possible to bid on individual bottles within a lot. I am almost never interested in a single bottle of anything, but lots of folks are, apparently. This leads to two problems. First, you can end up with only 1 or 2 bottles out of a lot. Second, someone who bids on only one bottle in a lot can push up the price on the entire lot.
Consider this example. If you place a bid on, say, 6-bottles in one “lot” at $40, and use autobid to protect your position up to, say $60, someone can come along, bid $45 on 1 bottle, and Winebid then applies your autobid to the entire lot-increasing your bid on each of the 6 bottles to $45, raising your total cost by $30. If someone continues to bid on an individual bottle up to $60, your bid will be raised along with it–up to the limit of your autobid. So because of someone who bids on a single bottle, you can find your costs being pushed up in ways that seem disproportionate.
I’m not sure there’s a way around this, other than to offer more wines in 3- or 6-bottle lots that can’t be bid on individually. They do this sometimes, but not very often.
Always try to win 6 or more bottles. It keeps the cost of shipping (ground) down.
When I build my ‘lot tracker’ for the week, I always have a few ‘backup’ lots, in case I lose out on my primaries. I use them to build my ‘winnings’ up to 6 or more.
Another part of being patient is to consider how often a given wine is come up. There are 52 auctions a year. Do you really need that specific bottle of a common wine if someone else really wants it? You’ll see some big variation in hammer price of the same wine, auction to auction.
I’m pretty much in the opening bid camp. There’s so many deals, you can be outbid 95% of the time and still win more than enough. There are some underappraised wines that merit an autobid, as well as specific very rare wines you may never see again. (Also, lately, there’s been some wines so insanely overappraised that it looks like WineCommune.)
The best deals are on under-the-radar producers and regions. If you know something no one else (who’s looking) does, you can find some real gems.
I also factor risk into the price. (That goes for any wines from any source, really.) My batting average has been great with WineBid, btw. But, you shouldn’t be in a position where you kick yourself over a bad bottle.
Scott, if you’re in Hood River, OR, how come you’re paying sales tax? Do you ship to a CA address? That can definitely hurt.
I’m like others here. I pretty much stick to opening bid prices. I’m only active when there are a bunch of things that interest me, so that keeps per bottle shipping down.
I find great deals even with the premium, insurance and shipping included. '01 Chave Estate St. Joseph for $15? That was about $21 delivered. Total deal. How about '99 Eyrie Reserve Pinot? That was around $32 delivered. Both are about half retail, all in. I go into my bid figuring what the real cost will be, so $30 is $37, $35 is $44 or so, etc.
Sometimes wines are interesting enough to consider being the second bidder. Mostly I figure there are those 52 auctions a year, so I just wait around for new things. Lately I haven’t bought anything. Just too much in the cellar that needs attention. But I did check this week and there are some really cool older Dressner imports that are bid up now, but also hard to get otherwise. I was tempted.
It’s interesting that so many folks use an opening bid only strategy.
I apply a “discount from market price or current value” strategy. I will set a max bid that guarantees me a price, all in, that is some meaningful percentage below current market price or current value (for older bottles that only trade at auction). I am willing to bid up to my ceiling.
At this point - with a cellar filled beyond capacity and multiple claims on every dollar, I don’t place casual bids in the hope of winning lots at the opening price. I only bid when I think I get a truly compelling price on a wine I really want to add to the cellar, even if that price is above the opening bid. Otherwise, I’ll just pass.
I’m definitely in the casual bidder category as well.
I used to live in SF and pick up the wines once or twice a year.
But now with shipping in addition to the 15%, things rarely look like much of a bargain to me above the ‘uncontested’ price.
So I rarely bid over an existing offer, and I almost never autobid. It’s easier to just wait for the next auction. I am generally interested in trying a number of things that I find out there, but it’s just not that important to me at this point. For the wines I know I really want I try to buy off futures/mailing list or at release. To me Winebid is just an occasionally interesting supplement.
It often seems to be a distributor dumping ground, as you see large volumes of wines that are obviously from a single source in the business. Sometimes the prices are competitive but they are dreaming to charge retail. 95% of what is on there is way overpriced, at least looking at Burgundy. But the other 5% is really interesting and I have found occasional truly choice bottles, both in the high-end department (e.g., 1980 Ponsot Clos de la Roche, something like $160 a couple years ago) and in the middle (e.g., 2001 de la Tour Clos Vougeot $30 are you kidding me? I bought about a case). I have also picked up at least 6 bottles each of the 98 and 99 Ponsot Clos de la Roche in the $65-80 range, but alas those days are past.
I remember those $30 2001 Chateau de la Tour Clos Vougeots. What made it an even better deal was that some random subset of them were the VV. I ended up with 3 VV and 6 regular.
I have had good experiences with WineBid both as a buyer and as a seller. The only exception would be putting wines into a $5 reserve spotlight to drum up interest – yikes, some of those bottles went for stupid prices. As a buyer, though the $5 auctions are great hunting grounds.
I’ve had some good experiences with old/random wines - e.g a '78 Bouchard Pommard that was “too good to be true” at $25 but I pulled the trigger anyway. The wine was in tip top shape, and showed much better than I had ever imagined.
There are a lot of '99 and '05 Burgundy Grand Crus on WineBid now at attractive prices.
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