BC '14 Vanilla and Prop "Stock"

This really belongs in the "Trading Help" forum.

You are going to get a lot of responses from different viewpoints. Some people will view this as an auction, and BA hates (and possibly doesn't even allow) auctions. Some people will say you should trade it for similarly difficult to attain beer of about the same monetary value ($4$) to be fair. Some will say to take advantage with the biggest trade you can.

This year's BCBS and variants are overhyped in my opinion (though delicious as ever). I don't know whether the value will go down though, because like your metaphor, no one really knows what stock will do. Prop 2013 and Backyard trade pretty well still. I don't remember how they were trading early, but I think it is similar, if a little more reasonable.

If you get some hits for beers you want, I would take them. As long as you and the other party are happy, it's a good trade. There's always the worry that you'd be better off waiting (been there with VSB and trading too early...), but it's pretty much impossible to say for sure one way or another.

 

Tell me what west coast IPAs you want for that bottle of prop, and Ill make it happen.

 

BCBS varients are sought out each year, and generally their "value" tends to increase over some amount of time until they start falling off (as indicated by ratings, word-of-mouth, etc). With this brand in particular, they will be on trader's radar for quite some time because their depreciation, or lack there of, takes forever due to their cellarability. People will continue to search for this year's Prop and VR, as well as other BCs, well into '15 and beyond.

As far as looking for return on investments, its nice to have harder to find beers such as Prop and VR. Some may inflate their "$4$" value while other veteran traders will go straight $4$, regardless of the beer's "rare"/"whale" status. That's an individual preference as far as Im concerned, but then again, I'm not a whale hunter.

If you are dealing both, you should expect beers that are equally or nearly as good as these two are, or, if you are just in the market to try new beers and you want to unload them, getting $4$ of quanity good beers can be the way to go. Bottom line, it's an individual's decision what to trade for. Good veteran traders will give you advice/recommendations when you start an ISO:FT thread. Disregard trolls who don't provide sound advice.

Cheers

 

BCBS does not go down in value; the regular or the variants. Reg is really fun to age and variants are coming harder and harder to come by each year. Seeing '13 Props go for '14 props regularly leads me to believe that the no increase in production for variants and increasingly thinner distribution will keep previous year's trade value high. With that said I also think as the new money crowd becomes more educated and Inbev/GI continuous practices like large unwarranted price increase and selling Macro brews under the craft brew labels will alienate a lot of people away from the brand and towards mid size Brewery's that are gaining larger distribution through expansion, mergers and collaborations.

 

As others have mentioned, there's no good way to answer this. You'll get a lot for them both right now since the hype is really high still (BCBS is still at the forefront of a lot of people's minds), but on the other hand, if you wait, depending on how the hype train goes, vanilla or Prop may end up attaining legendary status (think about how Vanilla trades nowadays, for example), in which case you'll be able to trade them for people's mortal souls.

I would say your best bet is simply to trade when something you want becomes available; it's not really worth it to hold out, hoping to get even more, because who knows what'll happen. In terms of what you can expect, that depends on who you trade with; some people like to go straight up on value, some trade based on how badly they want the beer.