eBay and Beer Sales

I'm afraid this type of altruistic thinking died [or was put into a coma] in the 80s.

 

I guess I missed in there where the vintner demanded that the auction sites remove their wine.

Nothing wrong with any of that. Hell, it's awesome. More profit for the vintner and less cost to those willing to pay for the wine.

That's why I said that the wine secondary should be an example for beer. It's obviously not equal now, but there's zero reason that should be the case.

 

What is so special about the free market that makes everything OK as long as you are playing by its rules? It's just another system for deciding who gets what, just one that favors those with more money instead of favoring those who travel or wait in long lines or know the brewer's wife's cousin or whatever.

 

Oh.... if only we had a way to determine who got more money.... some crazy system like "The people who work harder, or studied more" Utopia might just happen.

I don't buy beer from Ebay.... but if you want to, go for it. Acting like ebay has ruined craft beer is silly.....

 

I thought it was clear based on the context of this discussion, but let me rephrase: the easier you make it to buy your scarce, limited, crack-for-tickers beer, the greater the chance it will be resold.

Agreed?

 

Why do you feel like paying for it is so much different than putting time in for it?

If I were to fly out for a limited release, rent a car and a tent and be first in line - should I expect that I'd be able to get said beer? (caveat being that the release is a general public release, and first come, first serve with some sort of bottle limit). So if I'm willing to pay someone else a premium to do that for me, say a local with much lower operational costs, then where's the big difference?

Regardless, this whole conversation reeks of rich versus poor, masked in discussions of economic and social systems.

Personally, I think that breweries tend to reach god-status in the beer community too easily. Got to remember that they're in it in no small part to make money and/or be famous (here's looking at you Greg). Much like any other company, the vast majority don't care about you, the individual consumer, at all.

 

Are you seriously arguing that the mind-bogglingly corrupt secondary wine market should stand as a shining example to which beer auctions should aspire? Vintners don't have the time to be "screeching divas" because when they're not making wine, they're trying to devise new ways to make their product more tamper resistant.

 

This is a great thread if only because I was able to identify a BUNCH of people I'll never trade with

 

Sorry, are you claiming the only difference between the beer and wine secondary markets is the illegal activity? Oh wait, that's not a difference, it happens with beer too.

 

I don't. Let's say some brewery decided to stop doing brewery only releases, and put everything on eBay instead. People would come on here and complain about it and talk about how they deserve the beer more because they're local and about how profiteers show up on eBay auctions too, not just at releases, and on and on, and I would feel just as much dismay as I do now because of all the whiners and complainers posting here. It just screams entitlement to me. I used to be able to get that beer. Now the rules have changed and I might not be able to get it anymore. Bitch bitch moan moan complain complain.

 

I've been called entitled many many times on BA, but locals complaining that they deserve the beer at a lower price sounds a lot more entitled than a guy (me) who merely supports the free market to come to a price for a product regardless of where it is or how high the price might be. EBay (in this scenario) represents the free market.

 

No, that is not what I am claiming at all. Latour is pulling all future vintages out of distribution due to their fraud concerns, and DRC is expected to follow suit. Is it a good thing for wine lovers that these bottles will now only be available en primeur? This has obvious relevance in the beer world... DRC has regularly requested auction houses to remove their bottles from auction whenever authenticity/provenance is murky. As wine auctions pushed prices ever higher in the '80's and 90's, this naturally attracted criminals. My point here is that as more and more money enters the secondary beer market, fraud will increase substantially. This will eventually create a crisis of confidence which will lead producers to restrict access to product in the name of guaranteeing provenance. The irony here, and those who laud ebay for increasing access to beer should note this carefully, is that in the long run, beer auctions may ultimately limit beer distribution, not expand it.

 

re: kundog18 > well stated. the ebay distribution theory that has been stated prior is short sighted. the question remains if this scenario will happen regardless (ebay or no ebay)

 

I am actually entitled to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Hoppiness as guaranteed in the Constitution!

 

Not knowing the Constitution fail.

(That's the Declaration of Independence.)

 

Damn I have failed, oops!

Nevertheless I propose adding it to the Bill of Rights.

 

That would be cool.... lol

 

Life, Liberty and pr-hop-erty

 

I guess I missed the part in your post about asking for an example of a vintner requesting the removal of wine from an auction (see: Ponsot v Acker or Le Pin v Christie's; albeit those examples are over alleged fakes from the now-arrested Rudy Kurniawan, those are just two examples that come to mind).

And yes, the Harlan example was put in there to bolster the argument made previously that prices on some of these beers need to come up. Flip side to this all is that many stratospherically priced, limited release California wines are not withstanding the test of time like their European counterparts. Funny how there are all these parallels, huh?

I agree with you that wine's secondary market sets a good example, but the differences are not to be ignored.

• Top end current release retail for beer is what, like $200+ for Utopias? Then you have Petrus and Romanee Conti that retail upwards of $5000/btl. First growth Bordeaux retail well north of $1000/btl and they produce over 50,000 CASES per year, almost all sold as futures. This all makes for a large amount of cash to work with in the secondary market (auction houses take a percentage from the buyers and the sellers, brokers also take a percentage). To get to a point where it becomes a viable business model you have to move a whole lot of beer.
• Wine also has strict regulations on how much can be produced in a given year, plus the fact that you get one harvest a year. Beers vary dramatically batch by batch even with the same recipe and can be made as often or seldom as the brewer desires, without being bound too tightly to the vagaries of weather (a rainstorm in August can be the difference between a bottle of wine commanding $2000 or $200).
• Plus there are reasonably standard practices for closure and storage of wines (corks and capsules and stored at or around 55 degrees) but differences for beer (twist offs, crowns, corks, cork and cap, and no real consensus on how to store beer from what I can tell); again leading to a consistency of expectation in the wine secondary market that is missing from the beer market.
• Drinking windows for top end wines obviously range, but it's not unusual for wines to effortlessly age and develop for well over 30 years. I've had maybe two beers in the 30 year range that were pleasant to drink and about a dozen that were... educational. I'll grant you that that is a pretty small sample set and that recent brewery developments will likely change that, but to call that anything but speculation is reckless optimism. In any event, there is sea of wine that fits the criteria of being worth entry to the secondary market, and some freshwater lakes worth of beer.
• Shipping laws allow a grey area for wine shipping. To my knowledge, beer shipping is straight up illegal across state lines (I could be wrong, and you can go ahead and post links).
• Auction houses are selling wines and spirits through a partnered retail license. In New York, home to five major wine auction houses, those licenses would not cover beer as liquor stores are not allowed to sell beer.

Don't get me wrong, the market exists and it will get there. But it's a ways away in my opinion.

 

I don't know the laws, I was just going to respond that there are hundreds of online websites that sell and ship beer to customer's, so either there are hundred's of stores that are breaking the law, or it is legal if you have a license. You might be strictly talking about direct ship though.