Selling a 60 year old bottle of fancypants booze

January 30, 2006 11:14 PM

My great-grandpa never opened his huge display bottle of Benedictine in a fancy wooden cradle. How can I find a buyer, or at least valuation, for this rarity?

So there's this BIG (2 quart?) bottle of Benedictine liqueur that my grandma bought as a gift for her dad, she figures about 60 years ago. It is an impressive item, cradled in a complex wooden rocking cradle, wrapped with a lead ribbon, with a red printed wax seal on the face. And while the lead ribbon has torn some of the neck label and come loose from the seal, and the cork sunk in the neck when I moved the bottle by car last week, the contents are untouched. There is a 72 cent tax stamp on the neck and labels on the back in French and Spanish, the latter referencing Guadalajara. My family lived in L.A., so this may have been a TJ treasure.

Dada Louie died in 1971 (I fondly recall his Donald Duck impressions and the Newton's cradle on his desk), and it went back to my grandma, who only recently discovered she likes the taste of Mudslides, but otherwise is dry. Now she says that she'd to sell the famous family bottle if it's a collector's item. It is certainly striking.

Any pointers to dealers or eBay-type operations where weird old booze is welcome would be much appreciated. I did see the previous Ask Q about selling a bottle of Scotch, but that was a new bottle, and the consensus was to keep or drink it. Hey, we're thinking about it! But I suspect a new bottle of Benedictine would taste just as sweet to grandma and me, especially if it could finance scads of them.

posted by Scram to food & drink (5 comments total)

If the seal is loose and the cork just sank, you might be better off drinking it now, and enjoying the bottle as a display item. Although I can't imagine how long it would take to go through a jeraboam of Benedictine...That's a lot of Singapore Slings.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 12:03 AM on January 31, 2006

Well, you could expect to pay about $50 US for one litre of recent Benedictine, and I saw a 1945 bottle of rum listed here for about 400E. I suspect that it could be worth up to a grand or so. But you might want to ask them if they'd be interested in it.
posted by solid-one-love at 12:08 AM on January 31, 2006

Next time you're at your local family-run liquor store, ask them. Generally they've seen all kinds of this stuff over the years and have an idea of what it's worth, if not from owning it, from being asked by others.
posted by miniape at 6:21 AM on January 31, 2006

Try asking the folks at "What Is It Worth?" and see if they have an idea...
posted by jeanmari at 8:58 AM on January 31, 2006

Thanks for the suggestions. I've written to finestandrarest, and will try to snap some pix to send to What Is It Worth? as well. I did speak to a local liquor store owner, who speculated it might be worth $1500, and noted that even with the loose cork, the liqueur should taste the same today as when it was bottled... all the more reason to sell it as a rarity rather than consuming it.
posted by Scram at 10:20 PM on February 1, 2006