We have observed some ridiculous prices in a Japan-exclusive auction. The overall downward movement of market prices continued while the Macallan Edition No.5 arrived at auctions. Here is the price update for October 2019. 

In October 2019, we added almost fifteen thousand price observations to our database. While the average price of 507 Euros per bottle looks pretty high, this is only due to some extreme trades. The overall price movement went south once more, as indicated by our Whiskystats Whisky Index (WWI). For the third month in a row, the 500 most traded whiskies lost value, this month by 2,7%. Since its peak in July 2019, the WWI has lost 8,7% as it fell back to 200 index points.
Like last month, we used our region indices to determine that all scotch whisky regions drove this movement. The most-traded Speyside whiskies lost 1,4%, the most traded Highland whiskies 3,7%, and the major Islay releases went down in value by 4%. This is the same Islay index that climbed by almost 25% from November 2018 to May 2019. Since then, however, it dropped by 16% again. But actually, there is another major region that we want to point out this month, Japan.

Japan Special

WhiskyAuctioneer.com launched an Exclusive Japan Whisky Auction last month with 428 very rare and collectable Japanese single malts on offer. And it seems that the focus on Japanese whiskies paid off, at least for the sellers. Some of the lots reached such high prices that we had difficulty convincing our algorithms that these prices were indeed correct. So no surprise that the October list of top value gainers is dominated by Japanese whiskies, like the below Hanyu Two of Clubs from the Ichiro’s Malt Card series.
The last time we saw this whisky on auction was in June 2018, when it sold for 5500 Euros. It now exploded to almost 40 thousand Euros. The Hanyu Monochrome Joker sold for 55 thousand Euros and the Jack of Spades for 20 thousand Euros. Oh, and one of the rare 1st Editions of the Jack of Clubs changed its owner for more than 71 thousand Euros. But there were plenty of other Japanese releases which gained significantly too, like the Yamazaki Owner’s Cask 2s70058, which climbed from 185 Euros (February 2011) to 3500 Euros or the Yamazaki Owner’s Cask 0l3042, which now sold for 2800 Euros.

In the chart above, we compare our indices of the Japanese distilleries. The Hanyu index is profiting heavily from the exploding prices for the Malt Card series. Hanyu now tops our distillery ranking as the index climbed by 45% in the last six months. Interestingly, the most traded Karuizawa bottlings did not experience any gain in value as the index has been on a steady decline since the end of 2018. On the other hand, we see Chichibu charging through the field as it now takes the 30th place in our overall ranking. Since March 2018, our Chichibu index has gained a massive 120% and overtaken Miyagikyo and Hakushu.

Macallan Editions

Not long ago, the Macallan Edition No.5 was released, obviously the successor to the Editions No.1 to No.4. Soon after its release, it was traded in two different auctions, which can now be found in our database. In October 2019 the Edition No.5 traded 123 times. Those prices averaged around 133 Euros. This is considerably less than the 290 Euros achieved in September, but those crazy early prices for the latest releases are typical, and we still haven’t figured out why some bidders would play that game. In the chart above, we compared the historical auction prices of all Macallan “Editions”. The Edition No.1 dominates the graph as prices went from below 150 Euros to almost 900 Euros per bottle. Edition No.2 gained value as well, as prices increased from 110 Euros in late 2016 to nearly 250 Euros in October 2019. While prices for Edition No.3 bounce back and forth around 150 Euros, Edition No.4 constantly lost value as it now trades for hardly more than 120 Euros.

How did these latest auction results affect the market value of your whisky collection? Find out by tracking the worth of your whiskies on Whiskystats now.

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.