Rareness Ratio

how about when a beer has 10 wants, 0 gots. That's the rarest of the rare, therefor should be traded for some whales.

 

Where does that put my Founders Black Biscuit???

 

This is the problem with traders nowadays, just trade your beer for other tasty beer you want. A lot of times people are just trading tasty beers for mediocre beers just because it's more rare.

 

And a lot of people do this. Someone has Dave, M, or Framboos. They just don't want a million messages about it.

 

A long time ago someone proposed that anything with a 10:1 wants to gots ratio was a whale. I think its more like 15 but you get the drift.

 

I think you and several other BA’s are missing a critical distinction regarding value in beer trading. Rarity is only one contributing factor, and arguably not the most decisive. Value is driven by limitedness/rarity, allocation (max bottles per person), but most importantly, by desirability.

For instance, Dark Lord is not at all rare; 4 bottles x 5000 ticketholders = 20,000 bottles. However, it IS highly desirable on the market (let us please not turn this thread into a discussion on the merits of Dark Lord). A similar argument can be made for Pliny The Elder; Russian River make a lot of it, and year-round, but the demand greatly exceeds the supply, thus it trades slightly higher than other good DIPA’s from the west coast.

Crunching numbers of bottle counts and Wants versus Gots is, in my mind, a fool’s errand. Comparing wants versus gots is an okay start (even I do it as a baseline) but is hardly definitive. Your best bet is to research old trade threads (when those are viewable again) for similar beers – releases from equally respected breweries with similar bottle counts/allocations. Better still would be that brewery’s last big release.

 

A beer is only worth what the trader is willing to trade for it. That's the thing about trading.

I have been lucky enough to be on the receiving end of some completely unbalanced trade. For example, 2 sixers of Gumball Head for a bottle of Founders CBS. A year round wheat beer traded for one of the biggest hype monsters ever.

I'm not trying to shoot OPs idea down, because it's not a bad idea. It's just not really feasible to put a "trade value" on beers IMO.

 

How does this compare to BTUs?

 

You also have to consider what vintage the beer is. You might have 460 gots, but 400 might be the 2011 release. The 60 that are older are more "valuable" than the 400 new.

 

Peter you so crazy

 

Gots/Wants to BTUs is difficult. The beer just doesn't burn well.

 

What about a conversion to Schrute bucks?

 

I trade beer for one of two reasons: there is a beer I want that is not available where I live, or someone put out an ISO for a beer I have or can get so I offer to help them out and ask for something I will like in return. All this "what is it worth?" or "what can I get for..." stuff is silly. Why can't trading just be a mutually beneficial transaction between people who like good beer?

 

But how do I know if I won???

 

This has been done a long time ago but thanks for reminding me why I rarely trade beer anymore.

 

Ninja you cray-cray. If that shit fits in the whalez coozy 'tis rar, bro.

 

Kinda like WAR numbers for baseball, some guys need a hobby.

 

That works, unless it's an international trader. Then you have to deal in Stanley nickels.