The Auswine Forum

I price my cellar according to how much I would want from insurance for each particular bottle if my collection burns

For the 2 situations you pose I think it's more useful to record what you paid for the wine as opposed to what it is worth at the time you acquired it, given that the worth of the wine will change with time, and can be easily looked up (via auction results etc) when you want to value your collection.

Hi Alistair

Thanks for making me think of something I haven't considered before. Interesting question. I have used Cellartracker for a long time and always put in what exactly I paid (ie for a gift or bonus "$0")

Guess it just means my cellar isn't worth what Cellartraker says it's worth.

Hadn't thought about the insurance angle. May need a re-think.

Cheers

Michael

Alex F wrote:I price my cellar according to how much I would want from insurance for each particular bottle if my collection burns

Ditto. Replacement cost is what I keep a track of having been advised to do this by my insurance company.

Cheers

Dave

And yes, I do check changes in value over time for some of the wines I have bought. Mainly the more expensive foreign ones, and things like BDX en primeur which generally cost more to replace at retail than they did to buy originally and some of which have appreciated significantly.

Cheers

Dave

I use cellar tracker too.
I put the price I paid for the bottle or in the case of a gift I record what the bottle should retail for.
Then every two years or so I do a clean up and stock take of my cellar. I do this because there is always a bottle that you do not remove from cellar tracker or for example I purchased what I thought was 2006 Yalumba the cigar, put it in the cellar and at stock take I found out it was Menzies instead (dyslexia is great when the stuff up is in your favor). Therefore I had to change my cellar tracker records.
After the physical stock take I go to Langtons and look at the auction results/estimates and adjust the prices in cellar tracker for insurance purposes. Where I can not find the Auction prices I just leave them as what I paid for it. A little anal, but that's because... well I'm just anal about that sort of thing.

A decent cellar manager should have both Purchase price and Value now data items.
In my database I record the purchase price per bottle, initially set Value now to that or some higher price (even RRP) if the deal was unlikely to be repeated.
Then I periodically go through and update the Value now based on RRP or auction records such as Langtons.

I use the new grapestories.com version of cellartracker, but assume you can do the same thing in the original.

If you click on the "total estimated value" field, it opens up a page where you can update the current value of your wines, without changing the cost price. Because of that ability, I'll record what I actually paid for the wine as cost, then update the value there if need be. You can also see what the value is from community average values or wine market journal data (if you've made the voluntary payment).

I use cellartracker.com too. There is a purchase price field and a personal valuation field. So the purchase price is what it cost me to buy or zero if a gift and the personal valuation is the value it would cost to replace.

The personal valuation field is not entered when you add wine to your inventory, but on the main page for each vintage of the wine.

There are many wines which don't increase in value on the secondary market - these I set at RRP. For things which gain value I use the Langtons valuation tool - go to Langtons site and under tools is their information on prices - has some errors but as good as you will find. This basis has kept my insurer happy.

Yes - as Andrew, Dave and DJ above have mentioned, the combination of Langtons results and the CT bulk update field (Home > Common Tasks > Add Valuations) means the 'paid price' and 'replacement value' are both tracked separately.
Dunno that the Grapestories version was working properly, at least last time I tried.
I've tried with GS, I really have, but until better use is made of the screen 'real estate', I'm defaulting back to CT.
cheers,
G

One of the primary factors with cellar software for me was insurance. My insurance company wanted photos of everything that went in. I also cellar wine for my brother and my father so I wrote my own that has fields for owner, cost, value etc and a link to a digital photo plus drinking windows, regions, tasting notes etc.

I probably don't update the current value often enough.

With bottles back to 1939 this is the one sort of insurance whare you don't want new for old replacement.