Advise for selling a collection of Vintage Port

[Peter Calvert]

I have a collection of vintage port for sale. Would prefer to sell as a whole lot.
Can anyone help advise the best method to sell? has any member successfully sold a collection previously that could give some advice?
Thanks in advance

peter

[Mike J. W.]

I have a collection of vintage port for sale. Would prefer to sell as a whole lot.
Can anyone help advise the best method to sell? has any member successfully sold a collection previously that could give some advice?
Thanks in advance

peter

Hello Peter,

Welcome to the board. A few quick questions. Where are you located and how many bottles are you talking about? Where and how were the bottles stored?

If it's a smallish collection you might find someone on the board willing to buy it, but that's where location could come into play as shipping it in the U.S. is prohibited without meeting certain conditions. There are also auction houses as well. Do not expect to receive dollar for dollar value for the Ports if they're bought by a private collector or an auction house.

Mike

[Mark L]

Hello! There is also a specific place on this forum to post things for sale.

There is a Section in these forums called PORT AND MADEIRA MARKETPLACE a bit further below this section for Port, and is probably where you'd want to post any sale you'd like to propose.

But yes, to echo Mike, it will be helpful for you to provide as many details as possible, including the provenance, ullage, cork/capsule/label conditions, storage condition history, etc.

And also, yes, the shipping might be the trickiest hurdle of all, although there may be some options for you depending on where you live and where you are sending it.

One step at a time, I suppose, but the good news is that you've come to the right place where the audience could certainly appreciate whatever collection you have!

Good luck!

[Glenn E.]

Hi Peter,

A word of warning about selling - lower your expectations. Private sales between strangers usually only transact at around 50-60% of winesearcher.com prices because the buyer has very little (if any) protection. And I'm also talking about realistic winesearcher.com prices - specifically NOT the "average price" that they list, because that "average price" is inflated (sometimes dramatically so) by what we call "trophy bottles" that some stores list at absurdly high prices just to attract attention. To get an idea of the actual retail value of a Port, just look at the least expensive 5-10 listings on winesearcher.com and average those in your head. Then take half that number, and that's a reasonable starting point for a private sale between strangers.

If you have an entire collection to sell, your best bet may very well be to use one of the many auction houses that are available. I buy from a couple in California with some regularity - K&L Wines and Winebid.com - but there are also the big name places like Zachy's, Christie's, TCWC, Acker, etc. Auction houses will charge you a fee (and then ALSO charge the buyer a fee... it's a bit of a racket to be honest), but they'll handle everything for you and then send you a check.

I'm going to split this topic off into a more appropriate location, too. Welcome to FTLOP!

[Eric Menchen]

To get an idea of the actual retail value of a Port, just look at the least expensive 5-10 listings on wine-searcher.com and average those in your head. Then take half that number, and that's a reasonable starting point for a private sale between strangers.

We can debate a few percent, but Glenn's point is valid. Here's what I do when I buy at auction: O.k., auction is selling a bottle of 2002 Quinto do Nobody Vintage Port. First, I go look that up on wine-searcher.com, worldwide. If the lowest price is in the US, in particular at a merchant I know (and I know a lot of them), I start there with that price. If it isn't a merchant I know, or one that I know sells poorly sourced bottles, maybe I look for one I do know and consider the difference. If the lowest price is not in the US, I consider where it is and also look for the lowest US price. Hong Kong, Singapore, and the UK regularly have lower prices than I can find in the US, but shipping may not be so simple, so these don't get a lot of weight. France, Portugal, and Switzerland are usually more comparable; and I've bought before in the EU and had wine shipped to friends to hold for me, so that is an option. So from these low prices on wine-searcher.com I come up with the lowest retail price I can reasonably expect to pay. For 2002 Quinta do Nobody, let's say that price is $100.

Now we need to translate that to an auction. $100 at retail. For auction, I have much less recourse if the bottle is bad. I immediately discount to 80%. If I can buy at retail for $100, with few exceptions (like particular rarity) the most I'll pay is $80 at auction. I might pay that at TCWC, Zachy's, or winebid.com (the latter which will have photos). Mentally I might want even less at Acker, or if the bottle has noted deficiencies. But lets assume $80. At winebid.com I pay a 17% buyer's premium, at Acker it is 25%. So to get to $80, my max bid at winebid.com will be $68, and at Acker it is $64. When I'm seriously buying at auction, I put all of this into an Excel spreadsheet. I track the bid+premium against the low retail price and bid on those with the greatest discount. When a price crosses the 80% threshold, I drop it from the spreadsheet. Now as Glenn mentions, I'm paying a buyer's premium, and the auction house is also charging the seller a fee. How much various from auction house to auction house, and I've never sold through them, so I don't know. Google searchers point out that some charge fixed fees, and others sliding scale fees, and percentages from 0-18%. Let's guess 15%. So of that $68 or $64, you might get $57.80 or $54.40. Oh, and there is shipping to the auction house that someone is paying. That might come out of seller fees, might be paid by directly the seller. And of course I'm going to pay for shipping from the auction house.

Now a point raised by that last paragraph is that doing a direct person-to-person sale will certainly work out financially better for buyer and seller. There need be only one shipment cost instead of two, and that 15% seller fee and 20% buyer's premium are eliminated. But alas, can you sell your entire collection to one individual? Or will you need to split it up, and how much hassle will that be? There is a reason auction houses exist, and they certainly make money fulfilling that need.

[Moses Botbol]

Your locale and an approximate inventory will be better help give you the best advice for you port wine collection. You may be able to sell locally to private individual or a restaurant.

If you go to auction, you'll loose 20+% on auction fees along with a potential lower hammer value. They do, do the leg work, if you want a hand's off experience.

[Lucas S]

We might buy it, post the list of Ports and maybe we'll make a cash offer.

There's also a few auction houses that are typically overbid so you can sell to them, others can comment on this.
I think Leland Little, Christie's and perhaps Hart Davis Hart are some of them? WineBid should be fine too if you have good stuff.

[Glenn E.]

Now we need to translate that to an auction.

I do much the same math as Eric when purchasing at auction, but I skip the spreadsheet and simply put my max bid into the auction site and let it ride. Occasionally I'll instead attempt to snipe at the last minute, but these days that's not nearly as productive as it used to be since most auction houses are now using some form of auto-bidding with overtime. (Meaning that if someone bids in the last ~5 minutes, the auction is automatically extended by 5 minutes in order to discourage last-minute bidding. You still can, and it still works sometimes, but it's not like the days of yore when you could often put in a bid with 30 seconds left and get some great steals. These days you're usually better off just putting in your max bid and forgetting about it until the auction is over.)

[Eric Menchen]

These days you're usually better off just putting in your max bid and forgetting about it until the auction is over.

We are going on a tangent, but yes. And an advantage of putting in you max bid early is that a "tie" goes to the earliest bidder.