SELLING out of my private cellar?

WINE TALK
1

I have too much wine … and I´m getting older and older.

I decided to sell off a part of my bottles, mostly those I don´t like much and drink that often …
and I have some friends and acquaintances who are seriously interested.

I know roughly the wine-searcher market prices and all about rarities, conditions etc.
Selling by an auction house will cost me about 20% of the market value … so I should sell for about 80% of the actual value …

BUT: Is that fair to friends I know for years if not decades? Do they exspect to get bargain prices relatively to the market value?
For larger quantities should I grant a discount?

On the other hand some if not most of these wines are not easy to find (older vintages) and also not cheap - so the potential buyers should be happy to get an offer at all.

The last I want to create is any animosity that may occur by this deals … on the other hand I do not like to get rid of the bottles way below their value …
After the deal everybody should be happy.

Any advices?

(BTW: I´m living in Germany … so no further offers exspected …)

1 Like
2

Offer your friends and family to buy wines at your net proceed for auction estimate, so they save money buying direct from you?

2 Likes
3

That´s about the 80% I was writing about above.
However many of my friend know that I have paid only a fraction of this -
so I´ve got a bit of a guilty conscience (ok, I know, without reason)

4

Shrug. Inflation is real. Price increases are real. If you were selling your house to a friend would they pay the price you paid 20 years ago?

Giving someone a friend’s discount compared to what current, fair market value is, IMHO is both reasonable and generous.

5 Likes
5

If you sold your house to a friend, would he expect to pay your cost or something close to market?

4 Likes
6

A friend has bought many bottles from me and generally paid close to what I would receive if I sent them to auction. They weren’t super rarities, though, and I discounted bottles more if there had been a huge increase in value. My feeling is I want him to have wines I’d like as I know he’ll share them with me in the future.

1 Like
7

So you’re basically… Making money off a friend who is likely to drink them with you anyway?

1 Like
8

Selling at your net auction proceeds feels like a great value for your friends. At least here in the US there is about 30/ 35% difference between buyer’s price (with 20-25% buyers premium on top of hammer price) and seller’s net revenue (generally about 10% lower than hammer price). As a buyer I have at times split that difference 50/50 with the seller and have been happy about it.

3 Likes
9

You’ve paid storage costs (even if you store at home, you’ve implicitly paid by allocating space in your house). You’ve cared for them. You’ve curated them. Your friends could have bought them when you did, but they didn’t. Offering a small concession below the 80% of auction just for the convenience of not having to go through the hassle of finding a buyer might be a nice gesture, but not necessary IMO.

3 Likes
10

One thing to note… wine searcher prices often far exceed auction hammer prices (even WSPro low). So you will want to look up auction hammers (or at least as a buyer that would be my reference point). 20% of hammer when selling to friends seems very fair.

Other thing to consider (often ignored) is it may well not be legal to conduct private sales of alcohol where you live.

1 Like
11

Op said Germany, I’m sure it’s probably fine

1 Like
12

wine-searcher is the worst way to price these… you need to use auction data… wine searcher will inflate the prices massively, especially for back vintages due to rarity. They represent the offer price from retail, which is almost always significantly above clearing auction prices.

2 Likes
13

Dunno. I once saw a case of 2011 lafite sell for like 12k before fees and VAT on Sotheby’s.

14

Well, I cannot rule out that I might get served a bottle or two from my stock some day, but most friends have enough on their own -

Well, the auction fees for sellers in Europe are different as are the policies, but I can get away with ca. 20% - or pay 25-30% - and having quite a bit German wines to sell (in addition to italian and french) a German house would be a good choice IF i auction it.

2 Likes
15

Tbh I was just joking :wink:

16

Thank you, I´m aware of this, I have a good overview of the market here -

Private sales of items (incl. wine) are legal here, no problem, as long as I don´t buy and resell with in a certain speculation period. Only if I buy and resell within a year I have to pay taxes on the profit, but it´s still legal.
Only if I do it regularily and above a certain total amount it´s business income - and taxable.

1 Like
17

weird things can happen at auction… but 99% of the time retail is higher… if retail was lower, someone would snag it and auction it. Efficient market hypothesis.

18

well, that´s what I thought - I missed to add a smiley!

19

Definitely consider offering larger discounts for larger quantities. Selling through wine is challenging, and often a time consuming endeavour, incentivising folks to make larger purchases helps a lot.

As others have said, nothing wrong with offering your wines at a discount to current market prices. It’s a win-win for all. Your friends are buying aged wine with solid provenance at a price less than they could otherwise get, and you get a little something as well. There is nothing wrong with a mutually beneficial transaction.

3 Likes
20

Broadly yes but there’s also the risk weighting etc. If auction was consistently lower, people would buy from auction and sell to merchants (which i have done)

2 Likes