inventory appraisals?

Eric, Are you appraising for insurance purposes or for sale? In the former, you could probably just get a local retailer to do it for you; in the latter, an auction house would have to do a physical inspection of the bottles and your storage facility.

Mark Lipton

I basically agree with Mark. It all depends what you want out of an appraisal.

I'm sure I've seen ads for appraisals in back of WS classifieds.

Another option is just to use winesearcher.com. Most collectible bottles in most vintages will show up in pro version (in a few cases you might have to extrapolate from other vintages, not too hard if you know vintage reps). I'd use the middle of the retail range if valuing for insurance; I'd take 10-20% off the lowest retail if looking to sell.

good luck! Dale

Dale Williams Drop "damnspam" to reply

At one time the Chicago Wine Company, which does mostly auctions, would appraise wine. I have not been keeping up with them recently, but they probably still do. There are several types of appraisals based on replacement cost, likely auction sales price, likely price which you could recover at auction, likely price at retail or wholesale. The storage condition for the wine is all important if you wish to sell it, but perhaps not so important for insurance purposes. You often need to add specal insurance for valuable collections of wine or art.

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