A GT Wharton posted an interesting survey that he conducted about the prices people will bay for rare beer on eBay. His article, entitled Market Behavior for Rare Beer: eBay Auction Prices in Review appeared today on Rate Beer’s Hop Press. It appears to be a quite thorough look at auction prices realized over a one-month period. His dataset included 887 auctions. The average price was $122 ($137 w/shipping included). $9.50 was the low price and $999 the highest.
The five most expensive auctions by 12oz volume were:
- Midnight Sun M: $544.77
- Cantillon Don Quijote: $312.40
- Cantillon Rose de Gambrinus 1992 Vintage: $284.00
- Russian River Depuration: $265.07
- Flossmoor Station Wooden Hell: $260.12
And here, for example, is a chart showing “Average Value of Three Floyds Dark Lord by Vintage.”
Interesting stuff. He doesn’t go into the moral dilemma of selling beer on eBay and the fact that most brewers decry the practice, but from a merely numbers perspective it’s worth a read.
Whether or not you think people should scalp beer, it’s not a “moral dilemma”, it’s a clear violation of Ebay’s terms of use. Don’t like the terms? don’t use Ebay. Want to use Ebay? follow their rules.
Bill,
Chill, I’m on your side. I vehemently disagree with the practice. But there is a moral dilemma insofar as despite the fact that eBay’s “official” rules prohibit it, they tacitly allow it by looking the other way and are not shutting down the technical loophole that people are using to sell rare beer. These sales would stop immediately if eBay enforced their own policy. EBay makes money on every auction that’s conducted so they have no incentive to crack down on these auctions. I have it on good authority that a state guild approached eBay requesting that they take action to stop auctions of beer on eBay. EBay’s lawyers told this state guild essentially to fuck off, that they’d do nothing unless someone filed a lawsuit, and even then they’d fight it. So it’s not quite as cut and dried and because of that, it’s up to an individual’s ethical code whether they want to put a bottle of rare beer up for auction on eBay.
Oops, I didn’t mean to come out sounding angry at your writeup, which I’m not. Just saying that there is no “dilemma” in the sense that no player in this is faced with any ethical ambiguity. You can choose to be dishonest and pretend you’re following the rules, or you can be ethical and find an honest way to profit from selling rare beers.
Ha, probably me being overly sensitive. No worries, sounds like we agree 100%.
Let’s all blame Richard.