Everybody as a kid has had the experience to collect stuff. From simple shells on the beach or leaves in the forest to removing used stamps from letters with the least damage. We all grow up eventually. Some of us decide to step up this game to collect more and work less to pursue this hobby. This group of collectors rather work less with a lower salary, but owning a bigger collection. Another group switches their attention from collecting objects to collecting (more) money and decide to work more instead.
Based on the previous two groups one would expect you must choose between your hobby as a collector and your own job. However, I was so lucky to be in the third group by buying my first whisky ever to eventually merge my hobby with my job. Starting as a simple whisky collector next to my financial career as an investment analyst, I gradually started to work on the asphalt road to become a full-time whisky investor.
To me, whisky is an investment category that has minimum downside. Of course, as an investor you expect/hope that your investment will be more valuable over time. But that is not always the case, sometimes it becomes less valuable. Such events are called “investment risk”. On one hand, if the price of a whisky drops, you can always open the bottle to enjoy the content (and forget the bad investment during drinking as well). On the other hand, if the price of a whisky goes up, keep the bottle closed and enjoy the return. As an investor in heart and soul like me, return tastes much better than any whisky though.
An investor is always looking for the highest return and the lowest risk. With this rule of thumb in mind I’m always looking for the lowest price to buy a certain whisky and to sell it for the highest price. But one thing that will cause sleepless nights to every single investor is to buy it for more and sell it for lower than the market price. Hence, knowing the market price of a whisky anytime is crucial to succeed. This was also the first seed for building Spirits Invest. I have always been dreaming about a database in which I can lookup (historical) market prices of every single spirit that has been auctioned on the market. A database that I will not keep for myself, but a publicly accessible database for everybody who is interested in spirits investing. A big database in which members can value their collection daily. Furthermore, a database that is able to provide unbiased valuation reports of bottles and collections for insurance companies (and spouses?).