Sell it to Rudy…oh wait, forget that, he is out of business.
Which retailer? I’m in the bay area as well and need to unload a few bottles.
Cool. Always interesting to see how folks transition in this hobby. Thanks!
I’m interested just to hear about the process, if you don’t mind. Did you just call a conventional wine shop and ask? Are they doing it on consignment, or did they just buy them from you?
This is kind of crazy, but one or two times, at a prior job, I collected a box of wine I had lying around. Mostly wines people had brought over or given as gifts that weren’t things I was frankly going to bother to open, and plus, these were, almost by definition, the kinds of wines that were only going downhill as time went on. But I felt guilty about throwing them away, and I also wouldn’t have wanted to give them to people I know (and most of whom know me as a wine enthusiast).
So I went in after the office had cleared out and put the box in the main office kitchen, with an anonymous sign saying “Please take one.” I looked in the next day, and I think they had all been taken. Probably people enjoyed getting a free bottle of wine. Pretty good outcome overall.
Pablo, at least it’s only two cases of wine. Many of us make similar “mistakes” and either gift them or use them for parties. For zin you won’t get much action on commerce corner unless they are the ones mentioned and even then only your cost will be covered at best.
Well you’re lucky if you have “big name” Zinfandel like that.
A “big name” means that the wine might actually sell.
But even there - unless it’s Burgundy or Bordeaux or Champagne or maybe Giacosa/Conterno in the Langhe - you’ll be lucky to break even after they tally up all of the nickel-and-dime-you-to-death fees.
Honestly, if, after all the fees & transaction costs have been assessed, you get 90% of your initial investment back [i.e. if you only lose 10% on what you had originally paid for the wine], then you are doing very, very well.
The good news [when you lose money, or simply break even] is that the IRS taxes wine not as “capital”, but as a “collectible”, so you wouldn’t have gotten favorable capital gains tax rates if you had actually made some money - you would have had to pay confiscatory income tax rates on any gain which you had realized.
Finally, if your contract says, “Payment due 45 days after close of auction,” then don’t even bother walking out to the mailbox to look for the check before about Day 44 & 1/2.
Every single day that they can bleed you in order to earn some short-term points on your money will be taken advantage of.