King Henry's Whale Status ?

What is it landing that makes you shake your head?

 

Whales schmales. Good beer trades for other good beer, beyond that who cares.

 

It will be similar to Rare, but not exactly.

Rare: Off the shelf, $50/btl Tastes phenomenal (according to many)

King Henry: Off the shelf, $13/btl, Tastes phenomenal (according to many)

Once the "rareness" factor grows, the disparity in bottle costs won't matter as much, but it will still matter. I got to try both, and I'd consider going after KH again, but I prefer regular BCBS over Rare. If I had a Rare, I'd try to get 3 X KH for it, because I know there are still a decent number of people who have a decent amount of it, but whether that trade would happen, or if I'd be over-reaching, I'll never know.

 

the original price will definitely affect this. the offers for rare are usually a combo of high priced bottles, whereas KH usually goes for a single bottle of similar rarity/demand.

 

Rare has the combination of price, barrel aged, excellent reviews, but relatively high bottle count.

King Henry has all of the above except it's 1/3 the price. That has to influence trading on it.

 

i do not see KH ever being a whale as I have come to understand that term. what i do see is a near gridlock in beer trading with far too many traders getting way over the top greedy with every single desirable beer release (even those with thousands of bottles) as the pool of beers that qualify as sufficient trade ammo to land these beers being held hostage continues to shrink.

 

Don't be surprised its landing Black Note. Black Note isn't nearly as good as its reputation.

 

Not a whale. Whales don't make it to shelves in Iowa.

 

As the craft industry continues to explode, I think we're seeing a bit of a "noob" paradigm shift going on with trading, and King Henry is a perfect example of it. Whereas the old guard seems to appreciate things like "off the shelf", "bottle counts", etc, the new guard seems to be focused more on allocation and their own personal difficulty of obtaining. So in their minds BCBS is a whale because they only got 1 4-pack of it, never mind the fact that there are 100,000+ bottles out there. I don't necessarily think anyone is right or wrong in how they approach trading, but I've definitely seen enough comments and examples of this mentality to believe it is starting to control trading values.

 

Well as its been stated a million times, this site has a large learning curve. The noobs need more time before they should try to trade for everything.

 

It seems like Rare was actually a lot easier to get because the price tag meant it wasn't so readily hoarded. Lest we forget, Rare was not that rare.

 

Ohhh the good ol days...

Now Rare just makes a great extra.

 

where's the choice for "asking whether a beer will 'ever be a whale' makes me want to put a gun in my mouth"?

 

FT: King Henry ISO: Whales

 

Can we implement a setting on the forums that alerts us when certain beers become wales? I don't want to trade my beers until they're wales.

 

i'm all for chopping down giants, but by me KH cost about $20 (think most places were charging $18.99). i know NY gets gouged a bit, but was it really supposed to be $13? yowza...that's a big markup.

ack ack

as for whale status...i found 6 bottles at a random store the other day so i'd say we are pretty far off from calling this one a whale, but this batch certainly has the makings of one if the taste holds out over time.

 

Way, way too much emphasis on this question around here. I am not naive enough to believe that this culture of beer speculation will abate (until the bubble bursts, at least) but think that if you are taking this question very seriously, you might find yourself happier if you try to limit your beer purchases to things you want to drink, and try not to worry about beers you can't obtain. If you want to speculate about beer value in the way you'd gamble on the price of gold or soybeans, be prepared to lose more than you win and also to annoy people who view beer as an enjoyable consumer product, not as an arbitrage opportunity/profit making endeavor.

Also, Black Note is as good as advertised!