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When you’re deciding to finally give in and buy that Weller CYPB you’ve wanted or trade some great bottles for a unicorn you’ve been chasing you want to get a fair shake. Chances are you’re not paying retail for anything as it is 2024 after all where stores mark up everything to an eye-popping extent and on top of that inflationary pressures are squeezing those scant few dollars that are rolling around in most folk’s wallets. You decide to “Google” Weller CYPB and find a range of online liquor stores asking around $500 (or more) for that bottle – ok, but how do you know if that’s a reasonable price? It’s certainly well north of what the retail pricing for the bottle is, so you ask some friends what they use to value bourbon and most likely they’re going to direct you to one of two platforms which occupy the lion's share of the market on bourbon app downloads – BoozApp and OnlyDrams. OnlyDrams suggests that this price is in line with the secondary market, while BoozApp suggests this price should be nearly halved to be “fair.” That leaves you with a big range, and somewhere in the mix is the real price, and that’s where a new product on the scene comes in, Bourboneur which seeks to provide users better data, updated weekly to base their decisions to buy, sell or trade coveted bottles of brownwater. In today’s post we’ll do a side-by-side comparison to see how these apps stack up in terms of accuracy in pricing.
Data matters. So, let’s look at twenty commonly traded allocated bourbons to see how these three apps differ in their data which ultimately equates to you spending or losing money on buying, selling or trading allocated bourbon. Below you’ll see twenty bottles we queried in each app that we’re using to judge the associated pricing.
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Now, let’s take the time to dig into the data to unpackage what we see and the other features these apps provide…
BoozApp provides three suites of pricing, none of which reflect true secondary market prices. The three pricing brackets are as follows:
Summary: BoozApp does not include a secondary market price for bourbon, and the “fair price” is reflective of user sentiment, which typically tracks low. The app provides limited granularity in terms of batches of various bottlings, or varying years and pricing is therefore either not available or wrong. Take for example Thomas H. Handy’s 2007 release, no year-specific information is available, instead BoozApp just suggests that this bottle across all releases has a “fair price” of $624.95. The average price based on actual recent sales is $2,325, with more recent years such as the latest fall 2023 release fetching $440. A far cry from the stated “fair price” in both instances. Many common bottles are available on the app however, but much of that data is easily accessible at your fingertips with a simple internet query. Of the 20 bottles we searched on their app, twenty percent had no data available.
App Overview and Cost: BoozApp is free to download by providing your email address and setting up an account. Beyond the pricing detail discussed above, you can add bottles you own to create a “my bar” option to view your bar’s value and you can create a Wishlist of bourbons you’re interested in.
OnlyDrams provides only two suites of pricing, which does include purported secondary market valuations. The two pricing brackets are as follows:
Summary: OnlyDrams does include a secondary market price on their app, however this data is lacking and in 25 percent of the cases in our query of 20 bottles, not available at all. Where there is data it includes a range in many cases, often tied to bottles that have varying batches or years of production and isn’t reliable or accurate based on recent secondary sales valuations. A great example is Joseph Magnus Cigar Blend, which now has over 300 batches available. Not every batch is created equal, but OnlyDrams treats them as such with a secondary value of $249.99 across ALL batches. Imagine you used this data to value your batch 3 which is currently selling for $700 on the secondary…bet you wouldn’t be too pleased to find out your valuation was wrong by a multiple of nearly 2.5x! MSRP data provided is like BoozApp, but if you’re in the market for anything on the secondary, again, this data doesn’t really matter. There’s no information about how often this data is refreshed or where this data is derived from.
App Overview and Cost: OnlyDrams is free to download by providing your email address and setting up an account. Like BoozApp, OnlyDrams allows you to add bottles and create a collection valuation. There is the ability to search for others in the “community” on the app and provides a feature to help pick your pour based on your collection and custom input preferences. You can also create a Wishlist of bottles you’re interested in.
Bourboneur provides only secondary market pricing information given many of the bottle’s individuals are seeking valuations on are often not bottles you’re just going to find sitting out on the shelf, and if you do, they certainly won’t be at MSRP. Bourboneur provides an update every week on pricing which includes an average of what bottles are currently going for, as well as a range of pricing from low to high of what bottles have recently sold for on national secondary market.
App Overview and Cost: Bourboneur requires you to set up an account and input a credit card which then starts a seven-day free trial before you are charged. Users can select either a monthly plan for $3 or a yearly plan for $25. The app provides access to the Bourbon Blue Book™ which includes weekly updated pricing on over 3,500 bottles, a clickable tasting guide that helps users dissect what it is they’re tasting in their dram, the Wheel of Destiny – a customizable wheel (or wheels) that can be saved which users input their bottles into to spin, and randomly select a drink, direct access to the Bourboneur weekly blog, and a first of its kind catalogue of nearly 500 bourbons and growing that has proprietary flavor intensity data to help users find a pour they’ll love based on scientific analysis of flavor intensity from crowdsourced data.
Based upon a side-by-side review, the granularity of the data provided which includes specific pricing for varying years or batches cannot be beat by the Bourboneur App. The regularity of the updates from Bourboneur, including timely tracking for new releases coming to market is also second to none. Although there is a subscription required to access the app, if you buy a single bottle in a year, it more than pays for itself. Add in the “Find a Good Pour” feature which uses proprietary flavor intensity data for helping users find pours they will love based on their unique flavor preferences additionally saves users money while belly-up to the bar at their favorite watering hole. Download the Bourboneur app on either iOS or Android below.
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