If you’re hoping this post would start off with a newsflash that the secondary market is crumbling down and the velvet ropes are parting allowing the masses easy access to allocated bourbon products, I’m sorry to say that’s not happening.  Scrolling through social media this week, numerous posts highlight droves of people waiting in a line at various distilleries and liquor stores across the country hoping for the potential to buy something coveted.  The draw to America’s native spirit remains steadfast and as we recently wrote, The Allocated Bourbon Craze is Here to Stay.  A great pour is still a great pour, and there’s little to no chance that the draw to bourbon will be trending down amongst those already drinking the magic brownwater.

What is interesting to note however, is that pricing dynamics are shifting and using our free resource, the Bourbon Blue Book™ which covers weekly price shifts of nearly 3,000 different bottles of coveted brownwater we can put that data to work to understand trends in the secondary bourbon market in a way few others can, moving beyond conjecture to data-supported facts.  With nearly one million searches last year, and on track for two million this year, Bourboneur has become the nations primary resource for secondary market bourbon (and rye) valuations…and in a world where retail pricing for allocated bottles is now often exceeding secondary, this data is more important than ever, be that negotiating with a “museum owner” who wants a king ransom for anything that isn’t widely available or working a trade with a random person on your local Facebook bourbon group and ensuring an equitable deal.

Bourboneur Secondary Bourbon Market Index

With a desire to put the rich data available on the Bourbon Blue Book™ to action we unpackaged thirty different commonly traded bottles that were out of the “hype” phase, e.g. there isn’t any of this year's Buffalo Trace Antique Collection bottles included as these are still dropping in price and would skew the reliability of any sort of trend data.  We sought to incorporate bottles such as Blanton’s, E.H. Taylor Single Barrel, Elijah Craig 18, Michter's 10, Weller 12…the mainstays of the secondary market, while also incorporating other higher end releases such as Heaven Hill’s 17 Year bottling and last years Old Forester Birthday Bourbon to name a few.  These bottles provide the best opportunity to distill trends in both current and future markets.  So, what did we find?

In review of the 2024 market, to-date, prices continue to see softening across the board.  As we entered the year, we saw a nearly 3 percent drop in prices in January and an additional 3 percent drop in prices in February.  If you held the collection of the thirty bottles represented by the Bourboneur Secondary Market Index, you would have lost nearly a thousand dollars in value so far this year.  Not the greatest return if you’re just sitting on a pile of high-end unopened bottles, but chances are if you have a pile of high-end unopened bottles, you probably paid close to the manufacturer’s suggested retail price and instead of getting a 150 percent return, you’re now just looking at 144 percent on the secondary market.  I’ll take that over the 5.3 percent rate I can get on a certificate of deposit at my local bank at the moment.

When digging into the data, the biggest loser on the index was Willett’s 8 Year Wheated bottling, which has received anything but acclaim on a number or recent social posts I’ve seen. I personally didn’t find it offensive in the least, but I think there’s more than a few strong feelings about the bottles price point.  In the past two months, the secondary pricing for this bottle fell a total of 20 percent, currently trading hands for 225 USD.  A handful of bottles have seen small gains during this same period of receding pricing however, such as 1792’s Twelve Year bourbon which gained nearly four percent over this same time period, or Blantons Gold at nearly three percent.  Below we provide a graphic showing some of the trends for selected bottles included in the index.

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What’s Driving Pricing in Bourbon Markets?

As mentioned earlier, people aren’t necessarily falling out of love with bourbon, so why the current ebb in pricing?  With the state of affairs in the United States, the amount of discretionary capital sitting around in folks accounts has been disappearing with the uptick in pricing on all manner of items, be that your mortgage or buying chicken for dinner.  A survey towards the end of last year by GOBankingRates found that 87 percent of Americans said their expenses had gone up over the course of 2023, and although most increases were modest they were still on average enough to pinch budgets.  It shouldn’t be a surprise then that as costs increase, affecting overall financial well-being, people seek differing strategies to manage through, so instead of buying that marked up bottle of bourbon x, y or z the perfectly drinkable and widely available bottle on the shelf at the store ends up being where you head.  There’s also a lot of new distilleries popping up, offering lots of different alternatives to stick on your shelf.  To a smaller extent, some bourbons are becoming more available as producers continue to try and ramp up supplies to meet demand, which will likely be a mitigating factor on pricing in the future as we think about some of the major expansions that have been undertaken in the past number of years.

Sign Up to Keep Tabs on Markets

To keep up to date with the latest week to week changes on the Bourbon Secondary Market, be sure to scroll down and subscribe to our weekly email list, where we will start providing regular market overviews highlighting the new index we’ve developed. Similarly, if you want to keep up with Bourboneur, bottles drops and more you can join our community of thousands by scrolling down and you guessed it, subscribing to our weekly email list – you can also find us on Instagram, Facebook, and yes, even TikTok.  Show us some love and give us a like on your favorite platform, or all of them and keep up with all the Bourboneur happenings!

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