Free valuation
Describe what you have — one bottle or an entire cellar — and one of our specialists comes back with what we expect it to fetch at auction. It costs nothing, it commits you to nothing, and you do not need an account to ask.
We work from five years of our own hammer prices rather than from what a shop is asking. What somebody actually paid last month is the only figure worth quoting you.
Free, and free of obligation
You do not even need an account
A straight answer
Including when the answer is no
Usually a working day or two
Answered by people, not a script
Priced against real results
Five years of our own hammer prices
The valuation form
The more you can tell us, the closer our answer will be. Distillery, bottling year, cask, strength and the state of the label all move the figure, and so does anything printed on the box.
A photograph is worth a paragraph of description, particularly of the neck and the fill level. There is room to attach one, or a list, at the bottom of the form.
Both are perfectly normal here. For a larger collection a list or a couple of photographs of the shelves tells us far more than a paragraph ever could — you can attach either to the form.
If you have the Whiskybase number, that single line identifies the bottle exactly and there is no need to type out the distillery, the vintage and the cask as well.
Then you do not have to wait for a valuation first. Register your bottles straight away and we will value them as they are catalogued — the estimate follows the bottle rather than the other way round.
What makes a valuation accurate
A valuation is only as good as what it is based on. We are not asking for a catalogue entry — a few lines will do — but the closer your description gets to this list, the narrower the range we can give you.
If you do not know some of it, say so and send a photograph instead. We would far rather read the label ourselves than have somebody guess at it on our behalf.
And if it is a whole collection?
Then do not type it out bottle by bottle. A spreadsheet, a photograph of the shelves or even a handwritten list will do — attach it to the form and we will work through it and come back with a figure for the lot of it.
From your description to a figure
Four steps, and three of them are ours.
Fill in the form above with whatever you know, and attach a photograph or a list if you have one. There is no minimum: a single bottle is as welcome as a hundred of them.
Logged in already? Then your contact details are filled in for you and you can go straight to the bottles.
A specialist checks the bottle against what comparable examples have actually made — in our own auctions first, and in the wider market where our own results are thin.
If something in your description does not quite add up, we come back and ask rather than quietly assuming the cheaper reading of it.
Usually within a working day or two, by e-mail. You get a range rather than a single number, because that is honestly how an auction behaves, along with a note on what would move it up or down.
Where we think the bottle is not worth listing, we say that too. It is a cheaper answer for you than a listing fee.
Nothing happens until you say so. A valuation is not a listing, it does not expire on a deadline, and there is nothing to cancel if you decide to keep the bottle after all.
If you do want to go ahead, the seller form is the next step — and we can collect the bottles from your door on one of our routes.
What a free valuation is for
A valuation that talks a bottle up costs us nothing today and costs us a seller in three months, when the hammer lands somewhere else entirely. So we do not do it — and this is the shape of the answer you will get instead.
An auction is a room full of people, and rooms differ from month to month. We quote you the band comparable bottles have been landing in, with the reason it might come in at either end — never the one flattering number that happens to sit at the top of it.
Plenty of bottles are simply not worth a lot number, an inspection and a listing fee. When yours is one of them we say so plainly, and we say why. That answer costs you nothing and saves you the fee.
Now and then a bottle belongs with a specialist house rather than in a whisky and rum auction. If we think you would do better elsewhere, we will point you there instead of taking it on and hoping.
Before you fill it in
Free, full stop. There is no fee for a valuation, no charge if you ask about several bottles, and no charge if you come back six months later and ask about them again.
We do it because a seller who knows what their bottle is worth is a better seller to work with, and because the alternative — finding out after the hammer — is nobody's idea of a good afternoon.
No. A valuation puts nothing up for sale, signs nothing and starts no clock. If you decide to keep the bottle, or to sell it somewhere else entirely, that is the end of it and you owe us nothing.
If you do want to go ahead, the seller form takes over from there — and only then does a listing fee come into it.
Accurate enough to plan around, and honest about the fact that it is an estimate. We quote a range drawn from what comparable bottles have actually made, and we tell you which way we expect yours to fall within it.
What we cannot promise is the room. Two bidders who both want the same bottle on the same evening can take a lot well past its estimate, and a quiet night can leave it at the bottom of the range. That is the nature of an auction rather than a flaw in the valuation.
Usually within one or two working days. A single, well described bottle is often answered the same day; a full cellar takes longer, because we go through it properly rather than quoting you a round number for the shelf.
Please do not. Fill it in once, put the number of bottles in the field for it, and attach a list — a spreadsheet, a text file, a photograph of the shelves, whatever you already have.
If it is a whole collection and you would rather talk it through, say so in the description and we will call you instead.
We can, but it starts with a conversation rather than a form. Tell us the distillery, the fill date, the cask type and number, where it is stored and what paperwork you hold, and we will come back to you.
Everything that has to be settled before a cask can be catalogued is set out on our what we auction page. None of it can wait until after the hammer.
Then we will say so, and you will have lost nothing but the time it took to ask. It happens often enough that it is worth putting on the page: not every bottle earns its listing fee, and we would rather tell you that up front than take the fee anyway.
Sometimes the answer is to combine it with other bottles into one lot, which we will suggest where it makes sense.
No. The form works perfectly well as a guest, and we only need enough to write back to you.
If you are logged in it is quicker still — your name, e-mail address and phone number are already filled in, so you can go straight to describing the bottles.
Describe your bottle, attach a photograph if you have one, and we will come back to you with a figure. Nothing more happens until you say so.
