Yet another round of auctions went by and of course we keep you updated on the major happenings on the secondary whisky market. It seems like the 2016 Macallan price-rally came to a stop. The Fab50 continue to stay at a constant price-level.

April 2017 was quite a busy whisky auction month since we observed 4.754 trades on WhiskyAuction.com (WA) and ScotchWhiskyAuctions.com (SWA). These observations affected 2.593 whiskies in our database and averaged to 348 Euros. Macallan totally dominated this month by the number of traded bottles. 544 of the 4.754 observed trades were Macallan bottlings, which leaves Ardbeg (307) far behind. Unsurprisingly, the three most traded single malts are all Macallans too. Details can be found in our Monthly Summary.
The 300 most traded single malts, which are summarized by our Whiskystats Whisky Index, continued to lose value. After we observed the all-time peak of almost 330 index points in February 2017, these bottlings lost 2,5% in March 2017. Now, in April 2017, the index again lost 1,2% to now stand at around 318 index points. One major reason for this is of course the performance of the Macallan bottlings.

Stop, Macallan

In the last couple of Monthly Price Udpates we regularly mentioned the rapidly increasing prices for the most traded Macallan bottlings. A look at our Macallan index unveils that the worth of these bottlings increased by almost 70% from December 2015 to February 2017. This 2016 Macallan price-rally brought the distillery up to the second place of our distillery ranking, only behind Hanyu.
Over the last two months though, the Macallan index dropped by 6,5%. Naturally, Macallan is also a major part of our Speyside index. Consequently this index also lost ground over the last two months and now even dropped below the 350 points threshold which it just recently broke through for the first time in history.

Stay, Fab50

We have a brand new index which we created together with the Whiskystats community and which we just recently released. It is called the Whiskystats Fabulous Fifty (Fab50) and represents the value development of 50 hand selected rare and collectable single malts.
In April 2017 we observed many new prices for the Fab50. In detail 25 out of 50 whiskies experienced a price change. A look at our index shows that these new trades did not saw any significant changes. The index remains at around 274 index points which means that the included 50 bottles gained 174% in value since January 2012.

Go, Bowmore

The Islay based distillery of Bowmore currently resides on the 11th place of our distillery ranking. The index stays at about 252 index points and experienced a slow but steady 5,5% increase since May 2016. From all the 100 bottlings there are in our Bowmore index, we here want to point out the Bowmore 16yo (1990) Limited Edition.
First traded in March 2007, the prices for this Bowmore stayed pretty constant below 100 Euros until the end of 2012. During the years of 2014 and 2015 we observed a very volatile price increase seeing single prices go as high as 310 Euros and which ended with 160 Euros in January 2016. It seems like the bidders out there then straightened up their minds about this whisky which led to constantly climbing prices ever since. All the trades observed in the last couple of months are around 300 Euros with the last one even exceeding 330 Euros!

Scotland´s Liquid History

Are you tired of all the NAS and young bottlings out there? If yes, we might have the solution for you. Why don´t you go for a 70 year-old Mortlach? The Mortlach 70yo (1938) spend more than double the life-span of this article´s author maturing in cask number 2656. It was then bottled in 162 decanters and released in the year of 2010. We now observed the second trade for this precious single malt and hence it was added to our database. If you considering a purchase the good news is that the price dropped significantly compared to July 2016, where it was sold for 15.700 Euros. The bad news is that the price is still at around 5.500 Euros, and you may want to consider that you only get a 200ml bottle.

Worth Mentioning

At this point we want to mention some outstanding observations we made this month. There is, for example, the Glenmorangie 10yo (1980) Single Cask 4318. In February 2016 we had an observation of 298 Euros. Then, in November 2016, this whisky was sold at SWA for more than 1.700 Euros (see here). Now, in April 2017, the price fell again to 428 Euros (see here). Seems like one seller had a pretty good time there.
Another bottle we want to point out is the Lagavulin 18yo Feis Ile 2016. What makes this single malt interesting is a comparison between the prices observed at WA and SWA. It looks like the demand for this Lagavulin was particularly high in Central Europe since all of the price observations since August 2016 lay beyond their SWA counterparts. From August to October 2016 the differences were even larger than 100 Euros. It took until April 2017 for the prices to adjust across the two markets (Central Europe and UK).
 
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