Automatic Cellar Valuation

Overview

CellarTracker allows users, if they so choose, to independently track the current market value of their cellar as distinct from the purchase price (a.k.a. acquisition cost). This is primarily useful for insurance purposes but also to keep tabs on how different wines are appreciating. There are several features that all together comprise the Auto-Valuation feature.

• User entered valuations: Users can enter their own valuations for any wine in their collection. By default, entered values are for 750ml bottles and are proportionally applied to other bottles sizes. You can also specify specific values per size. (Note: currently you can only add/edit values in the full website. This functionality will be coming to the mobile apps in the future.)

• Wine Market Journal (WMJ) quarterly average: CellarTracker includes a large database of average auction prices based on auction results compiled from all major auction houses by the WMJ. Click here to read more specifics on this auction pricing data.

  WMJ is only available to CellarTracker subscribers. This also requires a 1-click signup and sharing your email address with the WMJ.

• Community valuations: Community average valuation (or purchase price if valuation is not specified) is calculated if two or more users have entered prices or values.

  This is only available to CellarTracker subscribers.

• Average purchase price: An average acquisition price for each wine is calculated based on all entered purchases by a user.
• 'Cascading' values: The site automatically picks among the above alternatives, in the order specified, to generate a per-wine value. And then all of the inventory and consumption summary views for that user can be set to show the price, value or price AND value at the same time.
• Other tools: The site has a bulk valuation view where you can review all of the cascading values and override them if you so choose with user valuations. There are also display settings to hide this altogether, just show price, just show value or show price and value at the same time.

General Questions

Q: How can I see the value of my entire cellar?

A: In your main cellar view you see the value listed on a per/bottle and wine basis with a total shown in the very last row. To see everything totaled and grouped in different ways, choose any entry from the Summarize by dropdown at the top of the screen: Region, Producer, Varietal, Type, Storage Location, etc.

Q: What if I disagree with the valuation that is shown for my wine?

A: No problem. Simply go to the bulk valuation view and add your own valuation. This has the dual effect of overriding any other valuations AND making the community average smarter for everyone else. (Note: currently you can only add/edit values in the full website. This functionality will be coming to the mobile apps in the future.)

Q: What does this feature cost?

A: Access to automatic valuation, including Wine Market Journal auction data, requires an active CellarTracker subscription. Learn more about CellarTracker

Q: What is your current international support and what are your future plans?

A: As of December 29, 2018, CellarTracker has now been upgraded with richer currency support. Each user, in their profile, can choose a default currency, and you can override this on a per-purchase basis. Current exchange rates are used to translate these values.

Q: Can I generate advanced reports such as "wines where the auction price is X% higher than average purchase price"?

A: Not at this time, but if the feature takes off we hope to add more nuances like this.

Q: I see a valuation column in the Excel web query. What is this based on?

A: This is the cascaded valuation, so it potentially is comprised of all of the data described above. Also, in addition to the 'cascaded' valuation, based on user feedback we have added separate columns for user-entered valuations, community valuations and average auction price.

Q: What is the exact cascade sequence?

A:

1. User entered values matching the bottle size
2. User entered 750ml values proportionally converted to match the bottle size
3. WMJ auction price matching the bottle size
4. WMJ auction price for 750ml bottles proportionally converted to match the bottle size
5. Community average valuation matching the bottle size
6. Community average valuation for 750ml bottles proportionally converted to match the bottle size
7. Purchase price* matching the bottle size
8. Purchase price* proportionally converted to match the bottle size
9. Zero value shown

* Purchase prices shown in the wine summary views are based in the average purchase price for a wine. In the consumption and individual bottle views, the specific price from any associated purchase is shown before the average price.

Q: How come my bottle price isn’t automatically assigned as my value for the wine?

A: Inputting a price when adding a bottle lets you to track how much you paid for the wine. Instead, value shows you CellarTracker's real-time estimate for the fair value of the wine. You can override CellarTracker's estimate by manually adding your own valuation. However by making this automatic, you would never receive CellarTracker's recommended value estimates.

Wine Market Journal specifics

Q: Is there any cost to register with the Wine Market Journal (WMJ)?

A: To turn on the WMJ data in CellarTracker you do have to do a 1-time signup and share your email address with the WMJ. Seeing the basic WMJ data requires no separate WMJ subscription. However, to see a richer drilldown on the WMJ site requires a WMJ subscription. Currently this is $99.95 annual or $19.95 monthly fee for a standard subscription. Professional subscriptions with richer content, access to their new mobile site and unlimited queries are available for $299.95 annually, or $99.95 monthly. (Please always check the WMJ site for their latest subscription prices.)

Q: I registered separately for the WMJ. Now how do I get the values to show up in CellarTracker?

A: This is very easy. Just go to http://www.cellartracker.com/wmj_opt.asp to activate the data in CellarTracker.

Q: Do you store successive price points so we can see historical gains?

A: The WMJ has data going back to 1997. On CellarTracker we expose the most recent quarter of data and up to 6 months of history. Subscribers to the WMJ can also go to their site to see the full pricing history.

Here are some specific facts about the auction pricing information from the WMJ:

• The data is based on the trailing 3-month average of auction lots, although it will fall back to trailing 12-month averages in the case of very little data. The data goes back to 1997, and the most recently available data is used for the valuation.
• Data is for specific vintages and formats (375ml, 750ml, 1.5L etc.) of a given wine. All vintage mappings match the wine the data is linked to.
• Prices are grossed up to represent cost to the buyer, inclusive of all buyer's premiums as charged by each auction house. This is a good insurance replacement value but is higher by around 30% than what sellers net at auction (which is hammer minus seller’s premium and other seller fees).
• The data is updated quarterly.
• We have data on nearly 150,000 wines and have mapped 100% of this.
• Only 1 sale was required in a year to surface a hammer price, although most wines have many more. The number of sales is not exposed on CellarTracker, but subscribers to the WMJ have rich drilldown ability to see the underlying auction data.

Community Valuation specifics

Q: I am concerned that other users can see information about my cellar due to the community valuation support. Can I hide this?

A: Yes, each user can choose to hide their handle from the inventory, consumption and purchase information that is shown on the site. Your data is still used to calculate the averages, but users won’t know this. You can read about the privacy options here.

Q: Do you do anything to validate the community data?

A: Not really. However, the values are weeded to those within two standard deviations. This throws out extreme outliers (such as if a user has their locale set to the US but is entering values in Japanese Yen).

Q: How many wines have community values?

A: As of 07-Jan-2023, there are 1,903,285 wines with community valuations.