When it comes to collectible whiskey, scotch sets the bar, and lately the bar has been set quite high. Europe-based auction tracker WhiskyStats estimates that about 200 million euros were spent on whiskey at auction in 2022, the latest data available. A majority of those sales—which have grown steadily over the last two decades—came from scotch, with a few Japanese whiskies achieving impressive returns, and a handful of bourbons (mostly names like Weller and Stagg) also ascendant. 

But by and large, the collectible American whiskey category is still in a nascent phase.

A major reason why is the regulatory landscape in the United States, which is far and away the biggest market for bourbon both at retail and post-retail. Here, private sales of alcohol without a license—and therefore a middleman—are largely illegal, whereas no such restrictions exist in Europe and the U.K. Those regions have cultivated robust legal secondary markets, including dozens of internet auction sites that facilitate “everyday” collecting: bottles valued at a few hundred euros (sometimes far less), instead of thousands. In the U.S., traditional auction sales are usually the sole outlet to buy and sell after-market whiskey. They heavily favor more expensive offerings, which pushes collectors of more modest means, and ambitions, into the shadowy realms of the illegal secondary market.

It's an issue that won’t be resolved anytime soon, but it also won’t completely hinder the collector market for bourbon in the United States, where a huge percentage of the collectors reside. And it certainly doesn’t mean bourbon collectors can’t glean some key insights from observing how the secondary scotch market has evolved.

Start with quality

Whiskey that will grow in value must start from a place of high quality. Macallan and Dalmore, two of the most desirable scotch brands at auction, aren’t making duds, and neither should any American distiller that’s aiming for the collector’s market. No matter how fancy the packaging, the whiskey has to meet a very high standard. The cornerstone of your collection should be bourbons that are widely regarded as consistently outstanding.

Look for authenticity

Authenticity means two things. One, very plainly, you’ve got to avoid fakes, which is to say, you shouldn’t waste time or money splashing around in pools that are filled with them. (We’ll cover this in detail later.)

Two, you should ensure that the whiskey you’re after has genuine heritage—a real story. Collectible whisky should be “special for a reason, and in a very authentic way. It doesn’t feel contrived,” says Christopher Coates, director and editor-at-large of U.K.-based Whisky Magazine. He cites Springbank and Glenfarclas, two rapidly rising single malts with histories dating to the early 1800s, unbroken independent ownership, and old-style production methods, as solid examples of this in the current collectible scotch landscape.

Bourbons with long legacies abound, but many high-priced offerings from non-distiller producers have emerged in the last few years, positioning themselves as “luxury” or “rare” without much of a foundation on which to rest those claims. These brands, like Blue Run or Frank August, may be able to sell at inflated prices out of the gate, but without a pedigree, they offer little assurance of returns.

Focus on auction-ready bottles

Brands with both quality and authenticity need one more element to make an impression on the collector’s market: bottles that are designed to collect. These often have several features in common:

• They’re numbered, so the buyer knows exactly how rare their treasure is.
• The bottles are more than just bottles. They could be crystal decanters, hand-blown glass vessels, or even unique art pieces from a “skyscape” artist.
• They have additional packaging, like a hand-carved box with gold inlay or an Art Deco-inspired suitcase.
• They come with accompanying accessories: a book about the distillery, a special crystal stopper, or even a miniature for tasting purposes—so there’s no need to open the bottle itself.

Scotch excels in this respect. “We see brands here like Macallan that are almost destined to be sold at auction,” says Nate McCray, who heads up marketing at WhiskyStats, pointing to the Archival Series as an example. A bottle of that kind is “sold at auction far more often than it's opened in someone's living room or bar.”

Scotch distilleries also often release sets of whiskies, intended for completists, such as Ardbeg’s Committee releases or the Macallan Edition series. Although some American whiskey brands are making forays in this direction—Parker’s Heritage Collection, WhistlePig’s Boss Hog series, and the annual chapters of Little Book come to mind—the trend still has yet to take off widely. When it does, be ready.

Know the up-and-comers

Despite the dominance of legacy brands, newer scotch distilleries are also making a mark at auction. “It's really exciting to see some of these new distilleries come on to the auction market and start to establish their prices,” McCray says. “I think that's the whiskey that people are going to keep coming back to as a taste memory from that particular time and place, from a particular vintage.”

American whiskey collectors looking for under-the-radar bottles that could see great returns down the road might check out maturing craft brands that net consistent high scores, offer limited editions and single barrels, and/or have been acquired by larger companies. Examples here include Westland, Westward, Balcones, Wilderness Trail, and Woodinville.

Understand how to avoid fakes

Scotch auctions have been plagued by con artists attempting—and often succeeding at—selling fraudulent whisky. One estimate by Beamish International places the percentage of counterfeit bottles as high as 10 percent of all auction sales. Most auction houses have staff to spot these fakes and eliminate them from the supply stream. They’re also generally quite transparent about their methods of authentication, and if they discover evidence of a forger, they turn it over to law enforcement.

While American whiskies sold at reputable auction houses benefit from the same rigorous authentication practices, that kind of transparency doesn’t exist in most secondary sales. 

“It feels like the Wild West,” says Isabel Graham-Yooll, founder of rare spirits consultancy Wisgy and one of the leading authenticators of scotch. She notes that because secondary sales are illegal and unregulated in the States, bourbon resellers operating in closed groups enact their own kind of justice by outing fakers among their ranks. But the justice usually stops there, and counterfeiters often move on to other unsuspecting groups who know nothing of their previous dealings.

As a result, there’s little awareness of forgeries in the mainstream American whiskey market. Adam Herz, who runs Herz’s Serious Whiskey Info on Facebook, is one of the very few expert authenticators of American whiskey openly sharing information about the phenomenon, which he says is “passing the tipping point” and will require more action going forward. “Remember that people are the target for fraud, not the product,” he says. “That’s why vigilance is so important. And that’s why some counterfeit bourbon can look embarrassingly bad, but still sell. People get too overexcited and don’t do their homework.”

Even though fakes are still a tiny part of the bourbon market, you can’t afford to ignore them. “There’s a level of anxiety that I think everybody should have about it,” Coates says.

Set a goal for returns

According to Coates, many collectors of scotch today aren’t high rollers; rather, they're average Joes who have gotten into whisky as an alternative to other kinds of investments. They’re picking up modestly priced, limited-edition bottlings with the aim of quickly reselling them for an equally modest profit.

At the same time, others are entering scotch collecting with dreams of, say, buying a house with several birthdays’ worth of single malt. “There's been so much media coverage of [this kind of phenomenon] that people who—whether they drank whiskey or not—wouldn’t have said, ‘Hmm, maybe this could be a financial decision,’ have now said, ‘Why am I letting myself miss out on this?’” says Coates, who points to the “romance” of whisky as influencing people’s buying decisions. 

“It could be that one of the bottles that they've bought will massively appreciate. I think what's more likely is most of them will probably remain worth about what they paid for them,” he adds.

Bourbon collectors should consider which goal is more important, and feasible: modest but quick returns on currently desirable bottles, or outstanding returns on a riskier investment—like an untried brand that seems to be on its way up—after a long wait. And always bear in mind that there's no guaranteed return for either scenario. What is guaranteed: if the bottles don't appreciate, you can always drink them. And they'll be damn good.  

Patience is the virtue

Luxury brands that consistently see big returns on the secondary market take time to build. In this respect, scotch has about a 150-year head start on bourbon, yet its meteoric ascent as a collectible is, still, relatively recent: it’s mostly happened during the last two decades. The signs are good that bourbon will turn a corner as well, but it’s unlikely to happen overnight.

To what extent will bourbon follow scotch’s trajectory rather than charting its own course? It’s far too soon to predict, and maybe impossible. Part of what makes the future hard to see is the nature of the American secondary market. “It’s not that the U.S. is behind. It’s just we’ve gone two very different routes,” says Graham-Yooll. “It seems heartbreakingly sad that enthusiasts aren’t allowed [to trade]. A lot of us over here are like, ‘Wait a minute, guns are legal but this isn’t?’”