Selling Dow's Vintage 1991 Port

Port to sell? Excellent! Please post here, with details of what you have, how stored, and where in the world it is. Please start by reading our ‘Standard advice to would-be vendors' and ‘A note to wine merchants’.
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Precipifaux
Cruz Ruby
Posts: 1
Joined: 21:21 Tue 24 Dec 2013

Selling Dow's Vintage 1991 Port

Post by Precipifaux »

I've been informed that a birthday investment present of 12 bottles of 1991 Dow's Vintage Port has come into my hands, and I was wondering where I could sell it or would it be worth keeping it for a while longer?

My Godfather has offered me £600 for all 12 bottles, should I take this offer or risk trying elsewhere for a better offer?

Thanks.
LGTrotter
Dalva Golden White Colheita 1952
Posts: 3707
Joined: 17:45 Fri 19 Oct 2012
Location: Somerset, UK

Re: Selling Dow's Vintage 1991 Port

Post by LGTrotter »

If you want the money take it, it's a very good offer.

Best drink it though.
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jdaw1
Cockburn 1851
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Joined: 15:03 Thu 21 Jun 2007
Location: London
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Re: Selling Dow's Vintage 1991 Port

Post by jdaw1 »

The price is fair, Dow 1991 being available at about £50 retail.

But you should compare to our standard advice for such situations.
We wrote:
:tpf: Standard advice to would-be vendors :tpf:
Some new members of ThePortForum.com join because they have a bottle, or some bottles, for sale. So we have jointly composed this standard advice, that covers the most frequently-seen situations. Of course, some more specific advice might follow after.

First, hello and welcome. We welcome such visitors, from the likes of whom we have bought bottles and cases in the past.

Second is less good. Your bottles are unlikely to be worth a lot. Selling at auction, through one of the big auction houses, is likely to net you about half the retail price. (Auction prices are less than retail which is why wine merchants buy at auction, and there is the seller’s commission and transport costs.) Selling to a wine merchant is likely to net you about the same, half retail. As a guide, vintage port (rather than LBV, Crusted, or other types), of a good name, from a good year, four or so decades old, of good provenance, might be as much as £100 a bottle. If not all these ducks are in a row, it will be less. So this will not pay for a car or a holiday: sorry.

So our usual advice is not to sell.

If you were given these bottles as a christening present, we advise that you hold them. When you are thirty or forty years old it will give you great pleasure to open these bottles with friends bottles you will have owned since you were a toddler. (Recall Alan Clark on Heseltine: ‟he had to buy all his furniture”. Your friends will have had to buy their own wine; yours came to you as a child.) Selling will net you small money; holding and drinking later can give you great pleasure.

If you are the father of the vendor, a teenager with non-vinous uses for money, then you are probably the best purchaser. Buy, and share with your offspring when they are old enough to regret having sold.

But if, despite all this, you still want to sell, then we might be the best purchaser. Please describe what you have, and post a picture of the bottle or of the unopened case. When did you acquire it, and where has it been stored? And where is it now located: which country (UK? USA? Other), and approximately where within that?
idj123
Morgan 1991
Posts: 1116
Joined: 20:54 Tue 13 Nov 2012

Re: Selling Dow's Vintage 1991 Port

Post by idj123 »

Yes, a good offer-why not sell 6 for £300 and and keep and drink the other 6?
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