If you’ve spent more than five minutes in today’s bourbon market, you’ve noticed the same thing we did years ago: pricing is chaos. A $50 bottle can be flipped for $500 in one city, sit at retail for $80 in another, and then show up in a Facebook group trade as a “$300 value, firm.” Enthusiasts argue, retailers shrug, and new collectors are left wondering if there’s any North Star to help navigate the storm.
That’s why we built the Bourbon Blue Book®. Not as a crystal ball, not as gospel, but as the closest thing to truth in numbers that exists in bourbon drawing from national secondary pricing – a uniform measure of value. And because we get asked constantly—“how do you come up with these values?”—we’re pulling back the curtain on the process. No smoke, no mirrors. Just data, curation, and a relentless commitment to accuracy.
Before we get into the “how,” let’s address the “why.”
Secondary values aren’t just barstool arguments or trading fodder. They influence real-world buying decisions, insurance policies, collection appraisals, and even the reputation of distilleries. A bottle’s value can determine whether you open it at a backyard barbecue, save it for your kid’s wedding, or cash it in for a mortgage payment.
In other words, pricing isn’t background noise—it drives behavior. And with so much at stake, accuracy matters. Guesswork doesn’t cut it.
The backbone of the Blue Book is data. Not rumors, not inflated Instagram “for sale” posts, not cherry-picked auction wins that make one-off bottles look like gold mines.
We source values using verified sales data. Yes, actual, completed sales, not listings. This includes private transactions and retail-to-secondary deltas when data is clean. If the bottle doesn’t actually change hands, it doesn’t make the cut.
It sounds simple, but the hard part isn’t gathering data—it’s cleaning it.
Plenty of folks have tried to build bourbon price lists. Most fail for one reason: garbage in, garbage out.
If you scrape Facebook groups without context, you’ll end up with inflated “ISO” posts where someone claims they’ll pay $800 for a $200 bottle—just to bait a trade. If you only look at auction data, you’ll skew low on daily drinkers and high on duties, because auctions don’t represent the average buyer. And if you take every retailer markup at face value, you’ll convince yourself Weller Antique is a $300 bottle because of one highway liquor store in Florida.
Our process weeds out the junk:
• No “flex” posts. If a guy says he would pay $500, that’s not data.
• No outlier markups. We throw out the 10x sticker shock prices from desperate shops or where folks clearly have zero idea and spend way more than everyone else. Take for instance the image below showing our last eleven verified sales of EH Taylor’s most recent Barrel Proof batch over the day and a half.
• No stale listings. A bottle unsold for six months is telling you the price is wrong.
• Weighted averages. Instead of cherry-picking the highest or lowest sale, we give more weight to repeatable, verified transactions.
Think of it like proofing down hazmat bourbon. The raw juice is there, but it may not be drinkable until you refine it.
Bourbon moves fast. A hot review, a surprise award, or a TikTok trend can push bottles sky-high overnight. Conversely, market fatigue can tank a “must-have” release in weeks. That’s why the Blue Book isn’t static, it’s constantly updated.
Values are updated nearly every single day. Your average shelf sitters are updated on a less regular basis, but the price of Weller 101 isn’t subject to much change. This tempo is especially important in the fall as some of the years most coveted bottles of brownwater are dropping. Big release drops (BTAC, Four Roses LE, Old Forester Birthday Bourbon) trigger immediate updates.
Accuracy isn’t just about the number—it’s about the timing. Nobody cares what a Michter’s 20 sold for last year if the 2025 release just dropped and reset the floor.
Here’s the thing: bourbon pricing is emotional. People tie their pride (and sometimes their identity) to what their bottle is “worth.” If you spent $600 on a bottle that the Blue Book lists at $400, it stings. If you got in cheap and the value skyrockets, you feel like a genius.
But this isn’t about ego. It’s about reality. Our job isn’t to make you feel better or worse about what you own—it’s to give you the clearest picture possible. Because the only thing worse than finding out a bottle dropped in value is making decisions based on bad information.
Accuracy matters because:
• Collectors need real valuations for insurance or estate planning.
• Traders need a fair baseline to avoid getting fleeced.
• Retailers need to know what customers are actually willing to pay.
• Casual drinkers deserve to know if a “special” bottle is hype or substance.
We’ve been asked: why not publish every data source? Why not make it fully open?
The short answer: protecting the data means protecting the accuracy. If every backchannel sale or group trade was blasted publicly, the sources would dry up and the numbers would degrade overnight. Instead, we publish the output, not every input—because that’s what keeps the Blue Book sustainable.
It’s the same reason Michelin doesn’t tell you which inspector visited which restaurant, or why distilleries don’t share every barrel sample. Transparency doesn’t mean self-sabotage.
The best compliment we hear is when a collector says: “Your number is lower than what people are asking, but it’s right—because bottles aren’t moving at those higher prices.”
That’s the difference between hype and value. Hype is loud, emotional, and temporary. Value is quieter, verified, and real.
The Blue Book isn’t perfect, but it’s designed to be the antidote to hype. And in a bourbon market that loves chasing shiny objects, that balance is critical.
Bourbon isn’t slowing down. Distilleries are cranking out more barrels, NDPs are experimenting, and new markets (both domestic and international) are coming online. Prices will keep shifting. Trends will keep surprising us.
The Blue Book will evolve alongside it. More automation, more sources, and better integration into tools like the Collection Tracker and Trade Evaluator. The method will get sharper. The numbers will get faster. The baseline will get stronger.
Because the secondary market may never be “orderly,” but it doesn’t have to be chaos either.
At the end of the day, the Blue Book isn’t just about numbers—it’s about trust. Trust that when you look up a bottle, you’re not seeing hype or hearsay. You’re seeing a distilled, cleaned, accurate reflection of the market.
That’s the Bourbon Blue Book® Method. Data in, garbage out removed, accuracy in the middle. It’s the closest thing bourbon has to a compass—and we’ll keep making sure it points true north.
So the next time someone in a Facebook group says their Blanton’s is “worth $250, easy,” you’ll know whether to call their bluff.
And that, friends, is worth more than a few ounces of bourbon and why the subscription to Bourboneur pays for itself in no time flat.
Drop season is here—and with it comes chaos. Bottles hit shelves, secondary prices spike (or crash), and more than a few wallets get burned. If you’re buying, selling, trading, or just watching the madness unfold, you need more than hype. You need numbers that matter.
That’s exactly what the Bourbon Blue Book® delivers: real sales, real values, updated constantly. Nearly 7,000 bottles (and counting), all tracked inside the Bourboneur App. No noise. No flex pricing. Just clarity.
👉 For $3/month or $25/year, the Blue Book pays for itself the moment you avoid one bad buy—or spot the right deal.
And because bourbon is more than bottles, it’s community—join over 26,000 bourbon fans who live this passion every week. From bottle drops and market insights to reviews and flavor debates, you’ll be first in line for what’s happening next.
📲 Download the app on iOS or Android.
.png)
📩 Subscribe below for our weekly insider drops.
📷 Follow along on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.
That’s Bourboneur.
0 Comments