Is it worth trading or because it is so expensive, will I take a hit on it? Or should I keep it for a few more years? Not saying I want to trade it, but if I came across the right trade, I would. For trading, what is it worth?
One rarish bottle + whatever to even up $4$. Two or more rarish bottles + less than $4$. I'd keep it.
In my opinion, $4$ is relative. Yes, it is expensive, but I have already had Utopias so it isn't a big mystery to me anymore. I even have the "special glass" for it, too. Do I expect to get $250 worth in trade value? No. Would I expect to get stuff relatively hard to find or all hyped up? Sure. Truthfully, I just want to share great, hard to find beer.
I've traded for a couple bottles. One of the trades I sent out some Hunapuhs and some Eclipse beers, in another I recall sending out Eclipse beers. Pretty much $4$. I like this trade as it allows me to send out several beers and only get one in return (great way to thin out my cellar). $4$ can get tricky at times as the beer has a MSRP of $150, but some people fork out up to $300.
Considering Utopias is on the shelves some places I'd say no, but there might always be someone willing to do it.
While I have no intention of trading my BA Dark Lords, the idea of getting a bottle of Utopias for essentially $50 is something I would consider. But on the flip side, you might as well buy a bottle of BA DL off ebay for $250 rather than trading away a Utopias - and we all know that is a big no-no.
someone recently posted a few older vintages for trade and was looking for $150 (of wanted beer) in trade for them. i would guess that you can get $150 worth of desirable beer, if you were looking for more, you could probably get it done, but i would guess there would be a good amount of local in there. throw a FT post out there...worse that happens is you get crickets.
Utopias is pretty much a permanent shelf beer in MA. You can always find the last vintage on shelves right up until the new one comes out. Still plenty of 2011 bottles floating around, and those came out a full year ago... So in theory, it's a "shelf beer". That said, it's a very odd trade because of the $160 price tag. The problem is I'm not going to just go drop $160 on a beer for trade unless I'm getting something fairly rare in return. So where I might not care about trading $20 worth of locals as a favor to somebody, I'd only trade out a Utopias for some decently hard to acquire stuff. But I can see where the person trading for the Utopias doesn't want to give up anything too rare for it. Thus a few people have definitely done it, but I don't think it's a very common trade.
I traded mine along with a couple other limited shelf beers for 02/02/02 VE. this was, however, a pretty rare situation, and under normal circumstances I would always recommend keeping the Utopias. It won't (usually) get you anything you can't trade for with cheaper bottles. Drink that byotch.
