Whiskystats now includes Sotheby’s whisky auctions. The historic auction results date back to 2019 and give insights into the secondary whisky markets of Asia and the United States. Live auctions can now be tracked with the Whiskystats Auction Notifications.
The whisky auctions run by Sotheby’s are unlike any other auctions we have tracked so far. There are far fewer whisky bottles being traded, but those are of the exceptional kind. In 2023, Sotheby’s only accounts for 1.2% of the bottle trades registered in our database but for more than 10% of the total trading value.
The Rare and Luxurious
On average, a whisky bottle at Sotheby’s realized a €4,600 buyer price in 2023. Every second bottle sold for more than €1,400. On the secondary market overall, the average price per bottle sits at €470 in 2023, and half of the bottles sell for less than €160. Looking at the most traded whisky brands at Sotheby’s in 2023 explains this difference.
More than every fifth whisky bottle (22.5%) traded at Sotheby’s is a Macallan, ten percentage points more than in the overall market. Karuizawa (8.8%), Yamazaki (6.2%) and Hibiki (4.7%) are among the five most traded brands. Since Sotheby’s runs regular whisky auctions in New York, collectable American whiskey brands like Pappy Van Winkle’s (6.2%) and George T. Stagg (3%) complete the list.
Selling High, Selling Low
Every auction house hosts a unique audience of whisky buyers and sellers, resulting in some whiskies selling higher or lower than on other platforms. This is the same for Sotheby’s. The Hibiki 17yo Kacho Fugetsu was sold three times at Sotheby’s Hong Kong this summer. On all three occasions, the buyer price stayed below €1.200. At the same time, all eight trades registered since June at other auction houses were well above €1.500, with one lot peaking at €2.000 buyer price.
Conversely, there are plenty of examples where prices at Sotheby’s exceed those at other auction platforms. One such example is the Macallan 18yo 1985 Vintage. On September 15, one bottle was sold for €2,800 in Sotheby’s New York, while the same whisky traded for €1,670 one day later in the European Union. The last Sotheby’s trade within the EU for this Macallan was on March 14, when a bottle fetched €4,750 in Paris.
Sotheby’s currently runs whisky auctions from Edinburgh, Hong Kong, New York and Paris. The buyer fee is 24%, while the seller’s commission is 10%. Whiskystats members can exclude or include specific locations from their Auction Notifications. Elite members can access all price details, such as lot location, unsold lots and backlinks to every auction lot.
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; therefore, some charts and figures may not match after initial publication.