'Perfect' Whiskey Collection Is Going Up for Sale

Private collection of 3,900 bottles, many of them rare, could fetch up to $10.5M in total at auction
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 9, 2019 10:49 AM CST
'Perfect Collection' of Whiskey Could Fetch Up to $10.5M
A photo from Whisky Auctioneer.   (Whisky Auctioneer)

What to get as a gift for the person who has everything? Consider the largest private collection of whiskey ever to go up for public sale. Of course, you'll have to have anywhere from $9.2 million to $10.5 million to afford said collection, which is referred to as the "Perfect Collection" and includes more than 3,900 bottles, primarily of single malt scotch. That's the range it's expected to fetch when online whiskey auction specialist Whisky Auctioneers put it up for sale next year, the BBC reports. The late Richard Gooding, a Colorado-based owner of one of the largest soft-drink distributors in the US, spent more than two decades traveling regularly to Scotland to buy special bottles at auctions or distilleries. As for the auction company, it was started just six years ago by a 33-year-old hoping his online business could eventually challenge auction houses like Sotheby's.

Gooding's collection includes some of the world's most sought-after bottles (the Macallan 1926 60-year-old Fine and Rare, for example); bottles from what the BBC refers to as "some of Scotland's lost distilleries," including Stromness and Dallas Dhu; and other rare varieties. "His mission was to collect a bottle that represented every single distillery, but his favorite was always Bowmore, with his preferred whisky being Black Bowmore," says his wife in a statement. He died in 2014, and his family has now put the collection up for sale. Whisky Auctioneer calls it "the most extensive private collection we have seen in terms of the completeness of representation of 20th-century Scottish distilleries." The auction goes live from Feb. 7 to 17 and April 10 to 20; Bloomberg notes the bottles will be sold individually, and some could fetch up to $2 million apiece. (More whisky stories.)

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