Our Fabulous Fifty collection fabulously retains its value, but that is about it. Meanwhile, Buffalo Trace battles Macallan regarding the most traded bottles. Here is the Price Update for August 2020.
Last month we processed almost 16 thousand different trades of whisky bottles. Macallan was the most traded distillery with more than 1000 bottles. But closely behind, we find Buffalo Trace, with over 900 bottles being auctioned. This includes all subbrands like Ancient Age, especially Blanton’s, with its countless Single Barrel releases. We expect to reach around 850 thousand matched price observations in our database by the end of this year.
Fabulous Standstill
The Whiskystats Whisky Index (WWI), our major market index, was not impressed by the sheer number of traded bottles. The historically 500 most traded whiskies gained only 0,18% in the August round of auctions. Our hand-selected Fabulous Fifty collection even lost 2,41% in value. The Fab50 index now stands at 386 points which match precisely the value from two years ago in August 2018. Hence, this remarkable collection of fifty bottles did not gain any value over the past two years.
We established the collection together with the Whiskystats community in Spring 2017. The reason for the standstill could be that we selected many bottles that showed an extraordinarily strong performance back then. It looks like many of these bottles now went through a time of price consolidation. These are releases like the Macallan Private Eye, the Port Ellen 1st Annual Release or the Ardbeg Very Old. They all retained their price level or even lost some value.
Remarkable Trades
Also part of the Fab50 collection, but by no means standing still with regard to value growth, is the Karuizawa Noh Cask 3565. In early 2017 this Japanese single malt was traded regularly for around 2.500 Euros. As it turned out, this was the end of the price correction that started at the peak of the Japanese whisky boom when prices reached 3.800 Euros in mid-2015. Over the last three years, prices steadily climbed again. In September 2018, the bottle reached 4.600 Euros. In July 2019, the 5.000 Euros threshold was achieved, and now, in August 2020, we see more than 5.800 Euros being paid at both WhiskyAuctioneer.com and ScotchWhiskyAuctions.com.
Another outstanding value gainer is the Glen Grant 31yo (1970) Single Cask 1043 by Samaroli. This Speyside single malt sold for 700 Euros in August 2016 and achieved more than 7.000 Euros only four years later. The Yoichi 116.14 bottled by the Scotch Malt Whisky Society needed eight years for a similar price increase. The 2.300 Euros paid at ScotchWhiskyAuctions.com equals an 800% return since November 2012. The Lagavulin 12yo Cask Strength release from 2008 dropped back to the 150-200 Euros price range after the ridiculous 640 Euros paid in the June 2020 WhiskyAuctioneer.com auction.
As always, do not forget to keep an eye on the latest changes in the value of your personal collections.
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.