Today we compare the whisky auctioneers we track. Where are the most bottles sold? What whiskies are traded and where? How did the prices change on different platforms? Here is the Whiskystats Auctioneer Comparison.
We currently track the auction results of four auction platforms: WhiskyAuctioneer.com (WAE), ScotchWhiskyAuctions.com (SWA), WhiskyAuction.com (WA) and Whisky.Auction (W.A). We thereby do not only collect the single price observations but go the extra mile to map those observations to the whiskies in our database. This allows you to track the value of a single bottle or your whole collection and provides us with the dataset needed to analyze the market.
Trades
By October 2020, our database holds more than 800 thousand price observations, which we could map to more than 72 thousand different bottles of whisky. SWA accounts for almost 320 thousand prices. For WA, we have processed more than 250 thousand observations since 2011. The smallest auctioneer currently on our radar is also the youngest one. Since April 2015, we have mapped 35 thousand prices from W.A. Each month, we collect in total around 15 to 20 thousand new trades.
Above, we see the annual number of trades per auctioneer since 2015. Back then, german-based WA was the biggest auction house in terms of sold whisky bottles. This rapidly changed though, as SWA showed a massive growth with more than 70 thousand registered trades in 2019 alone. Overall we see pretty much constant growth on all platforms. The year 2020 is unique, however. First of all, we have yet to process the three remaining rounds of auctions. Secondly, the Corona Lockdown saw SWA temporarily closing doors in spring and then WAE was offline due to technical troubles. Hence, the growth pattern is likely to be interrupted this year.
Favourites
When we look at the most traded whisky brands, we see an interesting pattern. For the two foremost U.K. auctioneers, SWA and WAE, the top four brands are Macallan, Ardbeg, Highland Park, and Bowmore. On SWA, Laphroaig takes fifth place, while on WAE, Glenfiddich made its way into the Top 5. Over in Germany at WA, Ardbeg leads the list of most traded whisky brands. This is followed by Macallan, Laphroaig, Bowmore and Springbank. Islay and Macallan clearly dominate the scene. While in the U.K., Highland Park and Glenfiddich join the party, the German market prefers Springbank.
We see a similar picture when we look at the single most traded whisky on each auction platform. On SWA and WAE, this is the Yamazaki 18yo. This Japanese single malt was sold 1,128 times on SWA and 771 times on WAE alone. Hence, these two auction platforms account for almost 85% of the 2,279 observations we have made for this Yamazaki. With 533 trades, the most-sold whisky on WA is the Ardbeg Galileo. No surprise considering the Ardbeg focus of the German market. On W.A, it is the Hibiki 17yo that tops all other whiskies when it comes to the number of traded bottles.
Indices
We want to find out how the prices changed on the different auction platforms with the following comparison. For this, we use our Whiskystats Index methodology. Hence, for each auctioneer, the monthly index movements are defined by the change in the value of the historically 200 most traded whiskies on that platform. This means that the WA index will be mainly driven by Ardbeg releases, while Macallan is the main driver for WAE, SWA and W.A. All indices were scaled to 100 points in December 2015.
By October 2020, we see that WA and WAE separated themselves from the two other auction houses. The price index for the most traded bottles on these two platforms gained 40% over the past five years. The WA index took a big hit in December 2019 but then recovered quickly. Unsurprisingly, this was also true for our overall Islay region index. The SWA index saw its peak in the summer of 2018 and has fluctuated around 120 index points ever since. The prices of the most traded whiskies on SWA did not change much since late 2018. Overall, prices increased on all platforms but not in the same manner, as this index comparison shows.
Note that if you opt for the Whiskystats Insidership, you can distinguish the observations of the different auctioneers in the price graph of all whiskies in our database. This information, if used correctly, will enable you to find the right place and time to buy or sell your bottle of whisky.
Disclaimer: the whisky market insights presented in this article are based on the Whiskystats database at the time of publication. Whiskystats is constantly adding new data, and therefore some charts and figures may not match after initial publication.