The Bourbon Brown Book – 2022 Edition
Check out our most current version of our secondary valuation guide for bottles of bourbon and rye whiskey
The Bourbon Brown Book – 2021 Edition
Last year's version of our secondary valuation guide for bottles of bourbon and rye whiskey.
The Bourbon Brown Book – 2020 Edition
The 2020 version of our secondary valuation guide for bottles of bourbon and rye whiskey.
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Bourbon pricing for rare and allocated bottles is difficult to understand, let alone to explain. So many factors go into play with what a retailer suggests as the retail price and where it ends up from there.
A bottle’s suggested retail price may be sold below that price but it almost always is sold above that price. At what point do you know when to buy and when to walk away?
We have attempted to compile a list of all of the allocated bottles we could think of in 2019 and break it down so that you could get an idea what the 3 different prices are for a bottle of allocated whiskey.
Here is what you should know
B is for “Below Suggested Retail Price” and is the price that you’ll rarely see. It’s below the distiller’s suggested retail price. How can a liquor store sell below the suggested retail price?
Because distributor’s sell bottles to stores at prices lower than that. The price a store buys a bottle for and the price that they sell it for is how they earn their profit.
Sometimes stores mark a particular allocated bottle under the suggested retail price to reward more valued customers. Other times, they’ll mark prices below retail as a kind of sale (usually with a catch).
Either way, if you can obtain any of these bottles at the “B” price, buy them immediately.
A is for “Average or Suggested Retail Price.” This is the price that you’ll typically see a bottle listed for if it is on the shelf.
Some of these bottles have variations in their prices from store to store and state to state, but typically, this is the most fair price you will pay for these bottles.
If you are trying to justify buying a bottle of this just to turn around and sell it again (this is called “flipping” and is technically illegal), you’ll want to look at the “A” price compared to the “S” price.
This will give you an idea of return on investment. I could try to discourage you from doing this, but nobody would listen.
S is for the “Secondary or Sucker Price.” Realistically, any price above the suggested retail price could be considered as secondary. But for some of the really rare bottles, you will start to find certain prices asked and paid for on a consistent basis.
The prices I have listed should be seen as a guide to not purchase above. If you see them listed above these prices, try to talk the seller down to where the price starts.
3 Tiers of Allocated Bourbon
I have ranked these bourbons based on how hard it is to find and obtain. Obviously, these may vary regionally, according to the season and the total amount of bottles sold. And realistically, some brands are more coveted then others.
You’ll see that many Buffalo Trace items are listed as Tier 1 items, but that’s just the way it is with as many fans that BT has.
Tier 3 (T3) – Allocated bottles that are somewhat easy to find and could be found on a shelf in most cases.
These are dependable annual releases with most having multiple releases per year.
Tier 2 (T2) – The difference between Tier 3 and 2 is that Tier 2 items are typically more expensive and may only be released once a year.
Also, I’ll include distillery-only releases in here as well because unless you live in Kentucky, then it’s not fair.
Tier 1 (T1) – These are the hardest to find allocated bottles and the ones that command the highest secondary prices.
You’ll realistically not find these bottles on the shelf. You’ll always “have to know somebody” to get them.
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