Trade value observations and how it doesn't make any sense

They give hobbyists a next level of obsession, make breweries easy money, which in turn allows them to brew more of the regular craft beer (and hopefully learn something, so they can continue to improve their offerings).

 

I'm only one man, can't convert the entire world with one DLD. But seriously, events like DLD, the PtY release, etc, all are good things for the beer scene and do raise awareness, no matter how insignificant you may estimate the affects.

 

Look, I know that there's the hyper crazy trade market among trade-whoring craft beer geeks. I get that. And within that tiny market, there's some fascinating dynamics. Like SpeedwayJim's trade-value spreadsheets.

But to suggest that said tiny, infinitesimally small microcosm of the craft beer geek world has any impact on craft beer as a whole and the overall market behavior...

I would guess more bottles of Fat Tire are sold every day than the number of trade-bait whales that have existed in the past 5 years.

 

Correct.

And done.

Don't fool yourself otherwise.

 

I guess the real question is "Do limited releases reconvert craft beer drinkers back to BMC?"

 

And by the way... 9 out of the 10 people who listened to your stories about Dark Lord Day nodded appreciatively, humored you, and walked away thinking...

Damn, man, it's just beer.

 

That's the crux of this. There's people like Speedwayjim, and others, who look at beers like pokemon. Far more concern over "trade values", "rarity", and so on.

The vast, vast majority of craft beer drinkers simply enjoy drinking good beer. They wouldn't even think of mailing bottles of beer back and forth across the country, let alone camping out overnight to have access to a $25 bottle of an obscure beer.

But it's like potheads. Potheads think everyone else smokes pot.

Traders, hoarders, and people who obsess over "wales" actually do think that there are lots and lots of other craft beer drinkers who feel the same way.

Hence, they don't notice the rolling eyes and under-the-breath chuckles from others when they start talking about camping out for DLD, or waiting in line at 3am for a bottle of beer. It's all normal to them.

 

Doesn't everyone?

 

If no one knows about it, who is going to seek it out? That said, it only takes a few ISOs* and some discussion for the hype train to enter hyperspace.

* Especially from known slayers of whales

PS: There are an insane amount of limited releases that are nothing but mediocre or downright bad. I for one would welcome the scenario in which every beer becomes so "limited" that the term loses its meaning... be like, only 9 cases made? B F D !

 

Duuuuuude....

Wait, what?

 

A thought. And it's a total longshot, probably impossible, and improbably awesome.

Could it be that one of the factors in the lowered demand for "wales", one of the factors that makes those wonderful trade-value spreadsheets so useless recently... is that beer geeks, even traders... are caring less? Getting fed up with the wales, the foolish "valuations", the ransoming of every beer? The barrel aged, sour, quadruple hopped, throw every ingredient at a recipe BS?

Maybe, just maybe... could it be that more people are just enjoying the beer in front of them, or enjoying the beer on the shelves, than they are concerned about landing the latest pokemon? Or at least, if people are going to trade... maybe they're trading for, ya know, normal beers? The whole idea that trading should be about?

I know, pie in the sky. And it would kill people like to OP, who would no longer be able to speculate about how many Black Tuesdays a certain beer is worth.

But it sure would be nice.

 

Black Note and Wild One are really the only Bell's 750's that command(ed) any value when they were released and that's because they were hyped, draft only beers before hand (Black Note much more than Wild One, but same concept). Even though they were silent releases the people that still got them and the people that found out about them flooded the trade forum with overvalued ISO's and FT's because of the draft only hype.

The majority (if not all?) of the CL and Allagash silent releases are all beers that are new and didn't have any previous hype to them.

 

This is the answer. Also, with a silent release, locals grab up the bottles and most go unreviewed, this way there really is never any hype building, people just don't know about them. Same thing with trading. Not only do others not know about said beer, but there's only so many people in a certain area that will have access to it, with a small percentage beng traders. These bottles get sent out behind the scenes to past partners, you just don't see them flooding the main page.

 

This year when KBS was released in my neck of the woods I spent half a day driving around from store to store and I only ended up with 2 bottles. You would think that I would have been "totally stoked" to land some KBS, but after driving around for 4+ hours I ended up being pissed off and highly agitated. All this for something that's not anywhere near "whale" status. I don't know how you all do it.

That being said if I can't walk in to my local store and grab whatever it is that someone is looking for in a trade, then the trade is probably not going to happen. On the other side of the equation I would never expect somebody to send me anything that they couldn't simply pick up off of nearby shelf either.

 

This is what regular trading partners do

 

The most recent KBS release pissed me off. They had at least 1500 people in line, and the the only people who got it where there before 3AM that day. Founders started off by only having 300 cases, was going to sell full ones, then decided to limit it to half cases to make 300 more people happy. But they only had about small percentage of production available at the brewery itself. They should have told people to go home, and not waste the time standing in line when they knew how much they had versus the number that showed up. Pissing off 900 people is probably a worse move than making 600 people happy. I do not understand having a less than necessary number of available beers than the demand calls for when they have the capability to provide it. From what I heard, Founders is trying to expand distribution at the cost of local providers. And that is just dumb.

 

Recommended treatment- have a couple beers.

Trust me, it works wonders.

and Cheers!

 

agreed. also no threads about people complaining how they got shut out and how hard it was to get.

i also think it has a lot to do with this mentality that people look at it as a shelf beer since someone can just walk in the store and buy it. speaking of the capt lawrence stuff, another interesting tidbit i noticed is that when barrel select black first came out people were listing it FT and no one seemed to care. as soon as it was announced that it sold out, the ISO threads started to appear and suddenly i started hearing from randoms asking if i have any bottles for trade. as the story goes, we want what we think we can't get.

the way to hype a beer is to ask what it takes to get one.

 

I know that I personally spend a lot less time caring about the newest wales than I did 4-6 years ago when I was actively trading, and I know a ton of old timers are feeling the same way. The general sentiment seems to be, "There's a fuck load of great beer available to me off the shelf or at the local brew pubs. Why go to the trouble and added expense of trading for something that, while different, probably isn't any better than what I already have access to?"

On top of that, most people only have so much disposable income, and the number of breweries putting out rare, barrel-aged whatchamacallit's has increased exponentially in the last couple of years, so people have to pick and choose which wales to hunt. Lastly, the prices for these beers has been skyrocketing as well, since the brewers know that some people will pay $30 for an average imperial stout or BSA as long as they stick it in a barrel first and keep the bottle count under 2,000.

I've actually been considering auctioning off the vast majority of my cellar because it's more of a hassle than it's worth, but even that seems like a pain in the ass, so I've just been attempting to drink/share them. Yesterday I drank a 2008 (I think) Fantome Noel and a 2007 Abyss all by myself, and it was awesome to be able to simply enjoy them without worrying about trade value or whatever.