A guide for sellers
Selling whisky through us comes down to four things: open an account, register your bottles, get them to Groningen and wait for the hammer. Everything in between — the inspection, the photography, the catalogue text, the bidders and the shipping — is ours to worry about.
This page walks through the whole route, what it costs you and what you can expect from us at every stage. It should take you about five minutes to read, and rather less than that to get started.
No seller commission
The hammer price is yours
€ 7,00 per bottle
One flat listing fee, one free relisting
We handle the rest
Inspection, photography, catalogue and shipping
Paid after the auction
Within ten working days of the buyer paying
Why a specialist auction
Most marketplaces and nearly every social platform refuse spirits outright, and the few that tolerate them have no idea what they are looking at. A bottle ends up next to a garden set, described in one line by somebody who cannot tell an official bottling from an independent one, and priced by whoever wandered past that week.
We do only whisky, and we do it for an audience that came for exactly that. Your bottle is checked in person, photographed properly and described by people who know why the fill level matters and what a broken customs seal is. It then goes in front of collectors across Europe who are already bidding on the lots around it.
That is what an auction is for. Rather than guessing a price and hoping somebody accepts it, you let the people who want your bottle most decide what it is worth — and more often than not, they surprise the seller rather than the other way round.
And you are not doing the work. You will not be weighing parcels, answering questions about the packaging or chasing a payment. You register the bottle, you get it to us once, and the next thing you have to do is read the settlement.
The whole route, in order
Four steps from the shelf to the settlement. Only the first two ask anything of you, and neither of them takes an evening.
You need an account before you can sell, and setting one up costs € 5,00 excluding VAT. That is a one-off, non-refundable verification fee: it exists to keep anonymous accounts off the platform, which is very much in the interest of everyone selling here.
We ask you to confirm your e-mail address, and — because we have to pay you at some point — your bank details, which are verified through our payment partner. Creating an account means accepting our terms of use.
Sign in, open "register bottles" and fill in the form as completely as you can. Be honest about damage — a torn label, a low fill, a missing tube or box. Buyers forgive a flaw they were told about and remember one they were not, and so do we.
This is also where you set a reserve price if you want one, so the bottle cannot sell below a figure you are comfortable with. Selling a larger lot? Send us the whole thing as a spreadsheet and we will do the registering for you.
Every bottle is checked by hand in Groningen, so it has to reach us before the deadline of the auction you are aiming for. There are four ways to manage that: we collect at your door, you deliver to a depot, you use a shipping label from us, or you post it yourself.
Miss the deadline and nothing is lost — the bottle simply moves to the next auction, which is rarely more than a few weeks away.
On arrival every bottle is inspected, weighed up against what you told us and photographed for the catalogue. We write the lot text ourselves, and once the auction opens you can follow the bidding on your own lots from your account.
When the hammer falls we invoice the buyer, arrange the shipping and settle up with you. A bottle that did not find a buyer goes back into the next auction once at no extra cost.
Step three, in detail
Every bottle is inspected in Groningen before it goes into a catalogue, so at some point it has to get there. Which of these four suits you best depends mostly on where you live and how much of a hurry you are in — all four end at the same table.
Every month our van drives a planned route through the Benelux, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and northern France. Book a slot on the one that passes closest to you and we come to you.
It costs nothing, there is no minimum, and we bring the packaging. From the moment the bottles go in the van, they are insured with us.
We keep three depots — in Belgium, Germany and Denmark — where you can hand your bottles over on a day that suits you rather than waiting for the route. By appointment only.
Because it saves us the detour — and gets a full van back to Groningen instead of a string of separate parcels — every bottle delivered to a depot takes 25% off your listing fee, or 50% if you supply the Whiskybase IDs.
Registering 6 bottles or more and based in Europe? Ask us for complimentary shipping labels through your seller dashboard and send the bottles to Groningen at our expense.
The labels are not insured, so pack the bottles as though the parcel will be dropped — because sooner or later, one of them is.
You are free to use your own carrier, and plenty of sellers do. Choose a service with track and trace, and insure the parcel for what the whisky is actually worth rather than what the box weighs.
Until the bottles are in our hands they remain your responsibility, so the packing is where the money is saved or lost. Bottle upright, neck braced, nothing able to move, and a box built for glass rather than for books.
Whichever route you pick, we confirm every bottle after it has been inspected — so you always know it arrived and that it passed.
The money side
Selling costs you a listing fee per bottle and, if you want one, a reserve price fee per lot. That is the whole of it. There is no commission on what the bottle fetches and no charge for the photography, the catalogue text or the shipping to the buyer.
After the auction closes you receive a statement setting out the hammer prices and everything we have deducted, line by line, so you can check it against this page.
And when does the money arrive?
Buyers are invoiced as soon as the auction ends and have three working days to pay. Once their payment is in, we normally pay you out within ten working days — no need to chase anyone, and no need to wait for the buyer to receive the parcel.
Plan your submission
Our auctions run roughly once a month and last about ten days. What matters for a seller is the drop-off deadline: your bottles have to be with us and registered before that date to make the sale, because everything is inspected and photographed by hand before the catalogue closes.
Register early rather than late. It gives us time to come back to you about a bottle we have questions on, and it gives your lot a place in the catalogue before the rush.
Missed a deadline? Your bottle rolls into the next auction automatically — nothing is lost and nothing is charged twice. The full calendar, including the auctions further ahead, is on our auction calendar page.
Before you register
Nearly everything with whisky in it is welcome, but there are a few bottles we have to turn away — almost always because we cannot vouch for what is inside them. Better to know that now than after you have packed the box.
That is the short version. Our page on what we auction goes through every category in turn — whisky, rum, casks, books and the rest — and sets out the condition a bottle has to be in. Still not sure? ask us before you send anything: a photograph and a line of description are usually enough for us to tell you where you stand.
The things sellers ask first
One. There is no minimum for registering bottles or for booking a collection, and a single bottle that has been sitting in a cupboard for twenty years is as welcome as a cellar.
Numbers only start to matter for the extras: complimentary shipping labels begin at 6 bottles, and a personal collection outside the routes is a conversation rather than a form.
A listing fee of € 7,00 per bottle, and € 6,50 per lot if you choose to set a reserve price. We charge no commission on the hammer price at all.
Opening an account costs a one-off € 5,00 excluding VAT. Photography, the catalogue text and shipping the bottle to its buyer are included and never invoiced separately.
No. Every lot is photographed by us once the bottle arrives, in the same light and against the same background as everything else in the catalogue.
A snapshot from you is useful when you register — it helps us plan and lets us flag anything unusual early — but it never ends up in the catalogue.
Yes. A reserve price acts as a kind of insurance: if the bidding does not reach it, the bottle does not have to sell. It costs € 6,50 per lot.
We do ask that reserves stay realistic — as a guide, the expected hammer price should be over € 100 and the reserve no higher than 80% of the retail price or of comparable hammer prices from the last six months. We may adjust or refuse one that is out of step.
It goes back into the next auction once, free of charge. Plenty of lots find their buyer second time round simply because a different audience is watching.
If it stays unsold after that free relisting, you can list it again for the usual listing fee, or have it returned to you at your own expense.
Buyers are invoiced the moment the auction closes and have three working days to pay. Once their payment has landed, we normally pay you out within ten working days.
You are until they are in our possession, and we are from the moment we receive them. That is why we would rather come and collect them, or have you deliver them, than see them go through a parcel network.
We cannot carry the risk for damage caused in transport or by a customs inspection, and if customs returns a parcel the shipping costs stay with the seller.
Yes, but always contact us before you send anything. Customs paperwork for spirits is unforgiving, and a shipment that leaves without the right documents tends to come back — at your cost.
No, and the platform will not let you: your own lots show you the bidding but no bid field. Bidding up your own bottle is fraud on whoever is bidding against you, and in a good many countries it is a criminal matter rather than a house rule.
The same goes for arranging it through somebody else. We watch for it, the bidding history of an account is not hard to read, and an account we find doing it loses its lots and its access — mid-auction if that is when we find it. If a bottle is worth more to you than the market will pay, set a reserve; that is what a reserve is for.
Tell us what you have and where you are. If you would rather know what it is worth before you decide anything, ask us for a valuation first — it costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
