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Do you collect Malt Whisky?

This article analyzes the background for whisky collections and gives important tips for your personal collection. Special attention is put on the increase in value - examples included.

Over millions of years humans have developed from the primates over the Homo Sapiens up to today's Homo Post Atomiensis ; -). It took several millions of years and some important characteristics as hunting and collecting secured the survival of our kind.

Here we particularly want to focus our attention on the human as a hunter and collector. These two characteristics complement each other in an excellent way. Chasing and holding tight so that we will not lose  anything we gained laboriously. Probably this impulse developed as a reaction to the seasons with their different food offers. Until today these characteristics were inherited. One can already recognize this behavior in our children, when they start setting up their loved toys in the shelf next to each other.

Many things are collected in daily life. This is not to be evaluated negatively. This passion for collecting of the larger world religions and their compiling of treasures of any kind, allow us today to understand our history far better than without.

In the private sector it happened to stamps and porcelain in former times. Later the spirit of the time changed to more cheaper things such as crown caps, beer mats and American car license plates. Today there’s no good left, which is not collected. Wrapping papers of sugar cubes, matchbooks, pins and whisky bottles are still harmless objects in the multiplicity of the collected objects.

Let’s dig a little deeper. What makes up a collecting object? At the beginning of a collecting passion there is always a trigger moment. Someone is given something special which is really fascinating or one sees a small collection of things, which one would also like to possess. In the case of matchbooks it is simple. You put aside everything you find. In the case of whisky it can easily become very expensive.

The value of collections

Thus the question about the value of collections arises immediately. Stamp collections are 'out' from the view of the recent generation - 'more out' is hardly possible. The value of these collections decreases rapidly. More and more collections are inherited and put on the market. The author of these lines tried to sell an inherited and nearly complete stamp collection (Germany starting from 1933) in a specialist shop years ago. The offer of the specialist as well as his advice were devastating. For a few stamps a few thousand Euro were offered. The still valid stamps were to be used up and the remaining useless should be thrown into the wastepaper. - That's the status about the value of stamp collections.

The value of collected objects depends on the normal economic situation of the offerer and the demand. Stamps, except of the Blue Mauritius, were always printed in millions. The old stamps cannot be placed on letters any more thus there’s a permanent excess in offer. Besides that stamp collecting is 'out' and the small multicolored pictures, post office fresh or stamped, are only worth a fraction of the imprinted amount. Why were stamps collected in former times and no more today? It can be only assumed. The stamped stamps were free. Foreign stamps inspired us to travel and that’s how it worked. The inspiration can today be satisfy with traveling and letters are written less. The world’s becoming multi-media based.

The Whisky collection

It is completely differently with whisky collections. The demand is high as never before and constantly the best bottles are opened and drunk by connoisseurs, despite all complaining of the collectors. What can you do against it? Bottle even more? The supplies of older Malt Whiskies are limited. The storage capacities remain finite and the current demand continues to rise. The warehouses are emptying so fast that some distilleries already present series of single casks for the remaining stock (Bowmore 1955, 1964, Macallan 1946, 1951, Ardbeg 1974, 1975, etc.).

These single series cost pretty much money per bottle. 250 to 5000 Euros may easily be spend per bottle. But is the bottle worth this money? Does the price continue to rise in the future? Or did a more resourceful salesman boost the price by artificial shortage?

With the motto: "Trust me, this bottle is the absolutely last piece. There’s no more coming. As XYZ collector you have to have it."

Please consider: At least some hundreds are bottled for each kind of bottle, as you can see for the 'rare' Ardbeg and Springbank on the pictures above. The bottles leave the bottling line in pallets. You can’t talk about unique pieces with most of the bottles. These arguments are often only to force up the price. – Please remaining critical.

One bottle of each distillery?

The collecting passion is edacious and so after a short time each collector wonders how he might also make money with his knowledge about the collecting object. In past times one bought at least four stamps. Two were stamped and two were kept post office-fresh. One of each were placed in the collection two were left to be used for exchange. A correct whisky collector always buys three bottles. The first to be drunk, the second for the collection and the third for later exchanging, when the price has risen accordingly. Thus the collection can be increased excellently. With the sale of the extra bottle you can gain additional money, in order to fulfill desires which go beyond the fixed collecting budget.

The whisky collecting passion usually begins with the desire to possess a bottle from each distillery. The way is simple: One buys what the purse allows. For approximately 5'000 Euros you can get approximately 100 bottles from different distilleries and then you have to save further money for a large shelf (show-case). At this point of time the whisky collector begins to spend more and more time tinking about the sense and the enhancement of his collection. If he at first focused on the great look of the bottles, he might slowly change his attitude to rare bottles. With the time he noticed that the standard bottles are always available. You get tired of seeing these bottles and begin to look for rare pieces.

Expensive realisations - A few rules

At this place I would like to share some insights with beginning collectors. We worked these things out over the past 10 years with our first customers as well as with heavy money spent on the customer side.

1. Budget
Do not start collecting uncontrolled. Specify with your life partner a collecting budget per year. In that way you can avoid later trouble. Save at least half an annual amount, so that you may - just in case - buy immediately. A dealer will rarely allow the placement of a reservation for you.**

2. Strategy
Write down your collecting goals and your collecting strategy. Thus you’ll avoid that you fritter away and spend money which you will nearly always regret afterwards.

3. Control
Keep account of your purchases and sales. Control the reaching of your goals.

The question arises: Who is allowed to place a reservation? May a dealer allow reservations? Can a dealer afford to accept reservations at all? Doesn't the dealer harm himself with his remaining customers, if he allows reservations? What counts more? Finding the treasure (reservation) or unearthen its (to buy)?

The Whisky Store doesn’t accept reservations! All orders are processed in the sequence of the incoming (first in – first out). If you are on vacation or have a tight liquidity position, you look with the oven pipe into the mountains, how we say here in Bavaria. Apart from the equal chances, the equality of the luck of the faster one counts if there are only a few bottles.

It is open to everyone to accept these three rules mentioned above. Without a goal in front of your eyes you won’t achieve any goal. It can also be fun to simply collect only beautiful bottles. However as in the case of the stamp collection one shouldn’t be surprised afterwards, if nobody wants to have these bottles.

In August 2002 a famous whisky collector decided to reduce his enormous collection to the area of Islay. More than 1'000 sometimes quite rare bottles are for sale. After two months only 6% of the bottles were sold at moderate prices. Who really looks for a Coleburn 1972 or a Deanston 17J?

Regularly The Whisky Store receives offers of smaller however comparable collections. Unfortunately we have to reject just as regularly, since we are not specialized in the purchase and sale of collections. For an individual and rare bottle you might still find another buyer. Two dozen or still more of these unique pieces can only be sold with substantial discounts. The Whisky Store is not adjusted to this kind of sale. You will have to drink these bottles by yourself.

If you follow these instructions you have developed from the primitive collector to the professional collector. You don’t collect for appearance, but you start to think about the future value of a bottle before you purchase it.

This is only a small step for you but a giant leap for your collection. In the following paragraphs we will select bottles strategically, which can later obtain thousands of Euro on large auctions like Christie’s or McTear’s in Glasgow. In September 2002 a Black Bowmore obtained 2'800 Euros in the The Whisky Store.

Very soon you will realize that many so far collected bottles don’t earn a place in your show-case any more. You cannot sell them. It is as with the stamps. Everyone has them and no one wants them. Look at the pallets with the collector bottles shown above. There are also hundreds in Germany and thousands in Europe of these selected 'very rare' bottles. You have to select collection items very particularly, in order to find the good deals between them - we will see later how this works.

What can you do with the remaining bottles? Now the whisky collection shows its unbelievable advantage in comparison to the stamp collection. You can drink up the 'worthless' or we should better say 'the bottles without foreseeable increase in value' by yourself. You wasted no money. It is even fun!

A Selftest

Let’s do a little test. The following bottles were listed in the first edition of the special whisky catalog in the year 2000 of The Whisky Store. The prices were converted to today Euros. Which ones would you buy with the belief of an above average developement in price?

Many of our collecting customers bought these bottles at that time. Which of these do you personally have in your collection? And with which result? There are stars as well as numerous blanks and/or flops.

To each of these bottles belongs a short background history, which we want to tell here. Naturally this will take a bit, but you as a collector are interested. Until here all other readers will have already stopped to follow anyway. We start going into details with the 'rare' Banff. After this table you can still find important pieces of advice! - Therefore please continue to read.

Banff Chieftains Choice 18 Years The Banff distillery was already closed in 1983 and torn down afterwards. The last casks are now filled into bottles. It won’t take long and there will be no more bottles from Banff available. Presently an attack on these bottles takes place. This Chieftain's Choice bottle is the most inexpensive of all Banffs. Will it therefore rise in price? Three reasons speak against it: A) The bottle is not an original bottle but originates from an independent bottler. That holds the price down very clearly. B) These bottles were in 2000 already too expensive to be consumed. Most will have survived and be located in the show-cases of those simple collectors. C) The bottler seems to have still more of these bottles on offer. Recently a 21yo Banff costs 57 Euro. Because of the higher age of this bottle it will probably turn down the rank of your bottle. And then still another Signatory bottling appeared in the summer of 2002 with 20 years for 55 Euro. Signatory has a better reputation among the independent bottlers than Chieftain's Choice. Over all Banff is of no particullar value for collectors. Everybody who would like to have a complete collection obviously needs such a bottle. It even isn’t a good Malt, since the distillery was closed and torn down because of lack of water and resulting quality problems. Drink the bottle and assume that nobody will like to have this bottle in the upcoming 20 years.

Macallan 12 Years 0,7 + 1,0 Liter Macallan is one of the most important distilleries in Scotland. But you have to learn to differentiate between mass filled bottles and series running only for a short time. The 12 years old bottle is beside the 10 year old the best selling malt of Macallan. If a bottle is wide spread in public, then it’s this bottle. In 1999 the design of the bottle was changed. For completeness you need the old and round tube in your collection. With millions of bottles sold, you will never obtain high prices. Today the bottle costs 33 Euro. A last word regarding the 1.0 litre bottles: They are not very popular within collections, since they are too large for most show-cases. Only for extremely rare bottles it doesn’t matter whether you have a 0,7l, 0,75l or 1,0l bottle.

Macallan 25Y-1975/2000 All older Macallans without exceptions are suitable for collecting. Especially if it has an indication of a vintage on the label, even if it is very small. While this bottle has cost 173 Euro in 2000, the remainders of the 25Y-1971 sold in 2002 already for 254 Euro. This corresponds to a price increase of 50% over a few years. NOTE! Because of the limited warehouse capacity of Macallan the current 25 years old bottles do no longer carry a vintage indication. This is a clear minus for collectors. Still the Macallan 25 years old is very suitable for collecting and even more for drinking. You can’t do much wrong.

Glenallachie Signatory 1991 This distillery works on full power. The Signatory bottle from that time was recently replaced by the same vintage only with two years of longer maturation time. The older bottle cost only 3 Euro more in 2002. The collectors however are looking for another bottle. It is the old original bottle with 12 years. If a new original bottling should appear, nobody will look for the Signatory bottle any more. From the collectors point of view this bottle is intended for a soon consumption. - It tastes very good.

Springbank 21 Years As a collector you should buy books from specialists to be informed about the history of the distilleries. The standard work is the Whisky Lexikon (Whisky Treasury) by Walter Schobert and each new edition of the small Michael Jackson. In there you can read: Springbank was closed for a longer time and there are no more casks with an age over 15 years available for bottling. The bottles come to an end very soon. It will take another 6 years, until the next 21 years old bottle will be filled. And then the new bottle shape will be different. A safe sign that the old bottle will remain recognizable. A collector with the desire for an increase in value can’t go past this bottle. The remainders of this bottle were sold in 2002 for 159 Euro. This was an increase in value of 70% over just two years. Besides the bottle is popular within the connoisseurs. This reduces the existing stocks additionally.

Bowmore Seadragon 30 Years The also extremely important distillery Bowmore suffers from the strongly emptying warehouses caused by the Malt Whisky boom also. Nearly no barrels with 30 or more years are remaining. Besides the 30 years old is very popular with the connoisseurs. On the other hand the magnificent ceramics decanter is harmful for a substantial increase in value. Collectors strongly pay attention to the motive, so that many full bottles end up in show-cases. Also some alcohol evaporates through the pores of the ceramics. Decanters are never as close as glas bottles. Because of low remaining filling levels the collector's value suffers. Nevertheless the bottle rose from 132 Euro in 1996 to already 238 Euro in 2002. Those are 80% over 6 years. The absolutely last bottles will very fast reach 300 Euro and more in 2003.

Loch Lomond This is the original bottle without an age statement of Loch Lomond. The retailers sold the first bottles in 1998 as rare pieces for prices around 20 Euro. Today the bottle is located in the supermarkets for 10 Euro. The quality is extremely modest. Forget the 20 Euro. A connoisseur will not drink this bottle. However the bottle could have become a rare piece, if the supermarkets had not accepted it and Loch Lomond had stopped production. Then this bottle would have become a real bargain. It is very rarely worthwhile to buy a first bottle of a distillery. Rather wait and watch from a safe distance how a new Malt is developing e.g. In 2003 the first bottles of the rebuilt distillery Glengyle are sold directly from the distillery. 270 Euro for a bottle whose content is not even distilled! Here only one party is making a profit. And that is the distillery.

Loch Dhu 1,0 Liter The black Malt Loch Dhu is such a kind of exception. Started as an experiment it did not perform well in the market. The taste of this extremely coloured Malt was too bad. After a few years of production the experiment was stopped. Nearly all bottles were opened out of curiosity. Introduced to the market for 39 Euro in 1998 the last bottles obtain prices of 75 Euro in 2002. This is an increase of scarcely 100% in 4 years. Because of the extreme scarceness of the bottles also the 1.0 and 0.2 litre bottles are looked for.

Ben Wyvis Signatory 1968 It is captivating to possess such a rare bottle. It is the only bottle of this Malt for many, many years. There’s supposed to have once been an original bottling before 1977 in Canada. Three casks were bottled in 2000 and the starting price of 1'150 Euro was pure wishful thinking of Signatory. By far not all bottles are sold yet. The prices are even under pressure, because the market did not accept the bottles. In addition a rumor keeps coming up that the former owner of the distillery still has casks and an original bottling is supposed to come out on the market. But that might also be a defense rumor by competitors of Signatory. They are annoyed that Signatory alone got all three casky for its bottling.

Caperdonich Gordon & MacPhail’s 1968 The distillery Caperdonich produces fast under the pseudonym Glen Grant No. 2. Much Malt is produced and an independent bottle of a distillery in production is not looked for by collectors (see Glenallachie). This bottle also isn’t a special delicacy and so nothing remains except to give this bottle in the year 2008 to your best friend for his 40th birthday. The stagnation of the price with 95 Euro in the year 2002 reflects the situation. Note: The distillery stopped production in 2002/2003. But this does not affect the status of this botte now.

Johnnie Walker Blue Label Blended Whiskies are not collected but are not drunk. Even if they are as elaborate and expensive as the Blue Label of the largest Blend brand in the world. Only pre-war Blends with small editions obtain useful prices on auctions at present. The king class are the Malts. If you consider that the Blue Label is sold in thousands of bottles world-wide per year, you have no unique piece in front of you despite the single numbering. The price history reflects this. With 119 Euro the bottle became cheaper.

For ambitious beginning collectors my remarks were surely unpleasant. I would like to apologize for them. Extreme examples, clear words and exaggeration are means to make fundamental connections clear. My goal was to protect you as a collector from negative experiences in the future.

Recommendations

Let’s become rather constructive. Which Malt Whiskies are actually suitable for collecting? The legendary Black Bowmore costed at its first appearance already over 100 Euro. The inexpensive mentioned examples above did not show increases except of the Loch Dhu. As a starting point the ambitioned collector with the desire for maximum increase in value should adjust himself to bottles with shop prices around 100 Euro. Obviously it can also be a bottle for 70 Euro sometimes. It is important that the bottle is more expensive, than the ordinary consumer can afford. But it should be not too expensive however, otherwise the rise in value will not be large enough. The auction prices do not grow into heaven.

To repeat it again: It is certainly not the many bottles between 30 and 40 Euro. Here the output of the distilleries is too large. Already the pictures of the pallets with collecting bottles shown above makes this clear. The inexpensive bottles leave Scotland in containers and not on pallets.

There also exist upper boundaries. If the bottles are already very expensive, the value enhancement for the coming years is already anticipated with the purchase price by the distillery. A clear upper limit cannot be quoted. However at the moment the limit should be about 200 to 300 Euro.

Which Distillery to collect?

Which distilleries are actually looked for? Before we speak of distilleries we rather talk about the independent bottlers. I don’t know of other independent distillers than Gordon & MacPhail’s, who ever achieved high collector prices. I do not mean a few hundred Euros for e.g. an old Cadenhead bottle. I mean really high prices of over 1'000 Euro. And for G&M it was also only the bottlings which were made on behalf of the distillery with the official label. You can immediately forget the own-brands MacPhail’s or Glen Avon.

Collectors look for originals – not copies. And even if the 1968 Bowmore of Signatory looks so great. They are only there for drinking. A hard core collector doesn’t pay anything for it. Also Silent Stills editions of Signatory make no exception. The current original bottling (Annual release) of Port Ellen already obtains better prices today than the former Signatory Port Ellen in the wood box with miniature and a piece of the cask. An exception is the Rare Malts Selection of Diageo. Since the series bottler is at the same time the owner of the distillery, this series takes over the status of the original bottling. Only if no more original bottlings enter the market for several years, these bottles begin to rise in value.

Finally let’s look at the distilleries themselves. Auctions of older Malt Whisky bottles have the highest influence to the value development of young bottles. Only distilleries which had Malt Whisky bottles on the market already shortly after the last war or even better before the war, have a chance to obtain high collecting values today. The auctions of Christie’s and McTear’s have example functions. Thus the distilleries with potential for extraordinary increases in value are reduce to a scarce dozen.

Hints for your Purchase

1. Only purchase original bottlings and no independent bottlings.

2. Buy only bottles of the top-distilleries (Macallan, Bowmore, Springbank, Glenmorangie, Highland Park, ...). Which other distilleries? Islay? – Surely! Lowland? – Rather not. Speyside? Yes and no. However not the later built but definitely the older like Mortlach, Linkwood, Glen Grant or Strathisla. Young distilleries such as Clynelish, Braeval or Teaninich are better avoided.

3. Buy special bottlings. Not Bowmore 17J, but Bowmore Claret; not Macallan 15J but Macallan 18J with a vintage or still better Gran Reserva; not a Glenmorangie 18 years but better the special finishing bottles such as Tain l’Hermitage or Sauterne Finish. In general all bottles with a vintage indication are suitable.

4. You should keep yourselves within the range of 70 to 250 Euro. Observe the market and read a lot. If individual bottles are strongly rising in price it is usually too late for buying. This value enhancement over the years can only with difficulty be compensated again later.

You can hardly sell your collected bottles. The outstanding pieces can be sold over auctions. For bottles under 300 Euro large auction houses are only rarely found. Their agio is too small for such bottles, than to make money with them. Bring yourselves into an optimal position by strategic purchases. Then you only have to wait between 10 and 30 years, until you can harvest the fruits of your work. Only few bottles in your collection will obtain extreme price increases. But surely a few will have.

Der Special Advice

For your long reading up to the conclusion I would like to give you another hot hint: In 1996 a G&M Malt from Glen Grant from the year 1936 cost 485 Euro. Today a G&M Mortlach from 1936 already costs 1748 Euro. For this old Malts only the year plays a role. Differences between the distilleries are no more made. Within 6 years a increase of around 2,6 times could be obtained.

In the future the relationship will not develop much differently. You only have to take younger Malts. E.g. Glenlivet 1948 is a very rare postwar vintage. Only little barley was available for distillation. The predominant part of the barley was given as bread to the starving population. Same applies to the Glen Grant 1949. Great Britain was starving longer after the war than Germany and the meal vouchers were abolished in Scotland years later than in Germany. A safe guarantee for a small number of casks from which there are also only few bottles left.

Conclusion

I wish you much success with your collection. Please do not expect that we rebuy bottles from you at a later point in time. Our business model does not contain speculation. We only live from daily sales.