
It’s 1996, you’re printing a catalogue for what is most likely your annual whisky auction. You are excited about the selection of bottles as there are some real gems, even if there are quite a lot of average bottles in there too; like the 62 bottles of Macallan ranging from 1937 all the way up to four bottles of the recently released Royal Marriage. You’ve also got four bottles of Black Bowmore, a Balvenie 50 year old, a Springbank 1996. But luckily you don’t need to photograph any of these less popular single malts. Instead, of the handful of photographs you take, you stretch to include a Strathisla 1940, a Highland Park of a similar age and squeeze in a Glen Grant 10 year old alongside a 1890s American whiskey. The rest of the photographs are dedicated to the really popular bottles; blended whisky.
A Snapshot Of The Whisky Market In 1996
It is the kind of catalogue that makes you wish you had a time machine to go back and snap up some bargains, or some incredible whisky!
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There are 12 bottles of Macallan Anniversary Malt 1964 in the auction. Their estimates are £100 to £150 each. For context the Bell’s Commemorative Decanters celebrating Charles and Diana’s wedding range from £150 to £200. Although the Balvenie 50 year old does have a more respectful estimate of £1,500 to £1,800.
At auction today the Balvenie is worth £15,000 to £18,000 (and more at retail) and that vintage of the Anniversary Malt is around £3,000 to £4,000 at auction. The Bell’s Decanters are worth less than £20.
The only bottle to have its own dedicated image is lot 296; it’s the hero bottle of the auction and adorns the cover. Estimated at £1,500 to £2,000, it is an early 20th century White Horse blended whisky that has a key locked capsule. I’ll admit I’ve never seen the like today, but I am skeptical you would get the same estimate.

There is a single lot with a 25 and 30 year old bottle of Springbank described as “Dumpy bottles with wax shoulder buttons,” and has an estimate of £300 to £400 for the pair. These bottles achieve around £3,000 each at auction today.
Times Change
Here is a selection of some of the most interesting changes in value. Royal Brackla 1924 60 year old bottle and miniature, 1996: £1,000 to £1,500, compared to £7,000 in 2024.
Black Bowmore Final Edition £200 to £250 versus £9,500 in 2024. Bowmore Bicentenary £100 to £150 versus £2,000 today.
There is a single lot containing Springbank 1950 30 year old, Highland Park 1957 22 year old, Mortlach 1957 22 year old and Macallan-Glenlivet 1960. The whole lot is estimated at £180 to £220 and in today’s market each of those bottles individually is worth between £1,500 and £4,000.
There were 388 lots in the auction, many of which contain multiple bottles, so there is no way to go through them all. It’s easy to look back through rose tinted glasses and say “of course” but I do think there are some really interesting “lessons” that can be taken away from this snapshot of the 1996 whisky market.
Trends Change
Changing trends is a big awareness point for me looking through the prices in the catalogue. Obviously blends were far bigger in the 1990s market compared to today. But even within the bottles of single malt there are clear shifts. Bottles from distilleries like Glenfiddich, Balvenie and Glen Grant were clearly much more sought after than from those like Bowmore and Macallan, the latter of which had only been marketed as a single malt for 13 years at that point.
This circles back to an article Mark has written about greed and fear cycles and the importance of not getting carried away with what is popular now. Which leads on to my second point.
Finding The NEXT Big Thing
If you are buying as a collector with a mind to making an investment then rather than buying with the crowd the important thing is to look for bottles that have future potential. Of course, it’s hard to know with any surety, but even within that catalogue you can look at the bottles that are priced highest and then look at less popular options with similar characteristics as a starting point. Then it is down to research and understanding of the market (and also sometimes just a bit of luck—although I’m sure many collectors would disagree with me here).
Patience
By far the most important take-away for me from the 1996 Christie’s catalogue is the need for patience. The exception I suppose is the blends, but the core drivers of value—quality, scarcity, inherent collectability—are a lot less apparent in blends and so with a degree of hindsight we can see why the value has collapsed (I can think of a few parallels from the 2022 single malt peak here).
Within the single malt bottles in the catalogue there has been a universal growth. Yes some have been more significant than others and picking the next big thing can help drive value faster. However, even for bottles we think of as “average” in today’s market, value has increased over the last almost 30 years.

This is important when looking at the market since 2018. Yes there have been some investors who have been lucky enough to make money quickly from certain bottles. But largely speaking the single malt whisky market requires patience and understanding. These two things will take you far if you’re looking at whisky bottle collecting over the next 30 years.