Whiskybase and Whiskystats are the two most extensive publicly accessible whisky databases, and they serve different purposes. In this article, we want to point out those differences and explain why sometimes the one and sometimes the other may suit you best. 

Regularly, we are asked about the differences between the whisky databases of Whiskystats and Whiskybase and why some of the displayed bottle prices do not match. To keep things simple, we often answer: Whiskybase is the “Facebook” of the digital whisky world, and Whiskystats is “Yahoo-Finance”. So what does that mean?

On Whiskybase, every registered member can add new whiskies to the database, including images and tasting notes. Then other users can add their notes or put that bottle into their digital whisky collection, which they can then share with the community. On Whiskystats, we restrict our attention to those bottles traded on auctions. So a new release is added to our database as soon as it is in two different auction rounds.
Consequently, the whiskies tracked on Whiskystats are a subset of those listed on Whiskybase. So if you seek information about the existence of some releases or other users’ tasting notes, Whiskybase is the place for you. However, if you want to know the value of your whisky, you should consider Whiskystats, and here is why.

Whiskybase Prices

Yes, you do find price information for many whiskies on Whiskybase. These are either offers from online shops or other users. The crucial information here is that these are only offers and not observed transactions. Of course, both the shops and the users can offer bottles for sale for any price they want, but if anybody will pay that price remains uncertain. This might not be an issue for comparably cheap and widely available standard releases. But this changes for rare and collectable whisky, as we shall see below.

Whiskystats Prices

So all the price information you find on Whiskystats comes from online auctions. We already include all buyer fees (but exclude shipping costs). This means that at least one buyer was willing to pay that price. So yes, sometimes we observe absurd high bids for particular lots, but still, there was one person who paid that price. This might not be the case for those shop and market offers on Whiskybase.

Price Examples

Let’s back up these claims with some examples. We did not cherry-pick these bottles, but they were simply the first three releases we stumbled upon. This means that the observed patterns probably generalize to the better part of the rare and collectable whiskies in the databases.

Take the recent Bowmore Distillery Manager’s Selection 22yo (1997), available at the distillery for 300 GBP. And here is the respective entry on Whiskybase. We find eight different offers with the cheapest one at 820 Euros and 870 Euros on average. Now let’s look at how the secondary market prices this whiskey. The eleven trades observed in October 2019 averaged 591 Euros, more than 30% below the average offer on Whiskybase.
The following example is the Dalmore 30yo (1973) Special Cask Series. Some of the latest trades we observed for this old Dalmore release went as high as 1800 Euros. The average price listed on Whiskybase is around 2400 Euros, which is a third higher. Again those offers do not reflect the price you would get or have to pay on the secondary market.
With more than 1100 observed trades, the Glenfiddich Snow Phoenix belongs to the most traded whiskies on auctions. The latest prices levelled in at around 350 Euros. On Whiskybase, we find 21 offers for this 2010 released single malt. The cheapest one is 530 Euros and on average a staggering 730 Euros. This is more than double the price you would pay on auctions at the moment.

So to conclude. Whiskybase is an excellent resource for finding information about releases and seeing other people’s whisky ratings. However, if you try to assess a bottle’s worth, whether for buying or selling purposes, the prices displayed on Whiskybase can be misleading. And that is precisely the point where Whiskystats comes into play.

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.