July 2026
In This Article
• Why the average price isn't halfway between the high and the low
• What the lowest sale actually tells you
• Why the highest sale isn't always the market
• Why some bottles barely trade while others change hands every day
• How to think about price trends
• Why MSRP is only part of the story
Every week we track thousands of bourbon transactions for the Bourbon Blue Book. Along the way, I get questions from collectors that have very little to do with bourbon itself.
They're about the numbers.
One message this week stood out because it's probably something many collectors have wondered.
The question was simple:
"The low price is $175, the high price is $275, so why isn't the average $225?"
It's a great question, and the answer highlights something that's easy to overlook. The numbers on a bottle page each tell a different story. Understanding what they mean—and what they don't—is one of the easiest ways to become a more informed collector.
The Bourbon Blue Book inside the Bourboneur app tracks more than 11,000 bourbons using verified secondary market transactions. If you're curious what a bottle is worth today, you can search it in seconds.
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Let's start with the number that causes the most confusion.
Many people naturally assume the average should simply be halfway between the highest and lowest sale. In reality, that's almost never the case.
Imagine a bottle with these verified sales:
$175, $185, $190, $200, $210, $225, $240, and $275.
The lowest verified sale is $175.
The highest verified sale is $275.
But the average isn't $225. It's about $212.
Why?
Because the average uses every verified sale, not just the two numbers at either end of the range.
If most buyers are paying around $200 to $220, that's where the average will settle, even if one buyer found an exceptional deal or another paid a premium. That's exactly why the average is often the most useful single number on the page—it reflects where the market has actually been trading, not just its extremes.
Collectors love to say, "I saw one sell for..."
Sometimes that's true.
Sometimes it was a local pickup. Sometimes the seller needed quick cash. Sometimes it was a friend-to-friend transaction. Occasionally, someone simply got lucky.
The lowest verified sale is valuable because it proves a transaction happened at that price. It doesn't necessarily mean you should expect to buy the next bottle there.
Think of it as the lower edge of the market, not the market itself.
The opposite is true at the top.
Every collector has seen someone pay more than everyone else thought a bottle was worth.
Maybe they had been searching for months.
Maybe it completed a collection.
Maybe they simply had to have it that day.
The highest verified sale shows what someone was willing to pay under those circumstances. It's an important data point, but it shouldn't automatically become your asking price—or your expectation as a buyer.
One thing that surprises many collectors is just how differently bottles trade.
Some bottles change hands dozens of times every week. They're widely available, actively collected, and there's a constant stream of buyers and sellers.
Others might only see a handful of verified sales over several months.
That doesn't necessarily make one market better than the other. It simply means some bottles have much more trading activity than others.
Highly active bottles tend to have prices that adjust quickly as the market changes. Scarcer bottles may move more slowly because there are simply fewer transactions to establish a new value – or simply fewer bottles if it for example it’s a single barrel with a low yield.
It's one of the reasons bourbon pricing is never as simple as looking at a single sale.
Everyone enjoys seeing a bottle move up—or down. But short-term price changes rarely tell the whole story.
A bottle that gained 5% over the past month might simply be recovering after a much larger decline. Another bottle that appears flat today may have quietly appreciated over the past year.
Looking at longer-term trends often provides a much clearer picture than reacting to every small movement. The best collectors don't chase every spike or panic over every dip. They look for patterns. You can also explore our growing collection of bourbon price history articles to see how individual bottles have moved over time (Russell's Reserve 15, Weller Single Barrel, Four Roses Anthology).
MSRP will always matter. It's where every bottle begins.
But once a bourbon enters the secondary market, buyers and sellers determine its value—not the suggested retail price.
Some bottles stay remarkably close to MSRP for years. Others trade for several times that amount almost immediately after release.
We've written before about why MSRP and market value often become two very different numbers. The important takeaway is simply this: if you're buying or selling on the secondary market, understanding current market value is far more useful than knowing what the bottle originally retailed for.
No single number tells the entire story.
The lowest sale shows what's possible. The highest sale shows what someone was willing to pay. The average reveals where the market has actually been trading. Trends provide context, and trading activity helps explain how quickly a market is changing.
When you put those numbers together, you get something much more valuable than a price.
You gain perspective.
That's ultimately what the Bourbon Blue Book was built to provide. Not just numbers, but context. Because better information leads to better decisions—and better decisions help all of us become a little more Whiskey Wise™. Browse over 11,000 tracked bourbons inside the Bourbon Blue Book.
Because the average includes every verified sale, not just the highest and lowest transaction.
It shows the maximum someone recently paid, but it doesn't necessarily represent the market value.
The Bourbon Blue Book tracks verified bourbon transactions to help collectors understand real-world secondary market values.
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