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 this new 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.
WineBid.com ® average selling price: CellarTracker includes a large database of average selling prices based on transaction data from WineBid.com (the largest Internet wine auction for fine and rare wines). Click here to read more specifics on this auction pricing data. (NOTE: This is only available to members of the CellarTracker community who have made payments in the past year. This also requires the user to register on WineBid.com. Registration is free but does require a valid credit card.)
Community valuations: The site now exposes the average valuation (or purchase price if valuation is not specified) of users of the site if two or more users with "English (United States)" as their locale have entered prices or values. (NOTE: This is only available to members of the CellarTracker community who have made payments in the past year.)
Average purchase price: The site allows you to enter prices for specific purchases and then maintains an average acquisition price for each user.
'Cascading' values: OK, this is the good part! For each US user 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.
Q: What does this feature cost? A: This feature is the first paid-only feature on the site. CellarTracker itself is free, but users are encouraged to make annual, voluntary payments. $30/year is the suggested contribution for users with fewer than 500 bottles in their cellar, $60/year for users with 500 to 1,000 bottles, and $100/year for users with more than 1,000 bottles. In order to see community valuations or to register for WineBid.com auction pricing data, you need to have paid in the past 12 months.
Q: What is your current international support and what are your future plans? A: Currently CellarTracker is somewhat limited with regard to international currency support. Each user, in their profile, can choose a locale. This controls the formatting of currency and dates on the site. If the user's locale is "English (United States)" then all of the features are fully supported. Otherwise, users can see auction and community pricing data in US dollars, but the cascading values do not include these sources. In the future we hope to extend the site to allow users to choose currencies per-purchase and also to do currency conversion between the supported currencies for the entire feature described above. This may take a little while though.
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 WineBid average selling price.
Q: What is the exact cascade sequence? A:
User entered values matching the bottle size
User entered 750ml values proportionally converted to match the bottle size
WineBid.com average selling price matching the bottle size
WineBid.com average selling price for 750ml bottles proportionally converted to match the bottle size
Community average valuation matching the bottle size
Community average valuation for 750ml bottles proportionally converted to match the bottle size
Purchase price* matching the bottle size
Purchase price* proportionally converted to match the bottle size
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.
WineBid.com specifics
Q: Why can't I register on WineBid.com? A: Please see the WineBid.com page on shipping. "Due to certain legal restrictions, we cannot ship to the following states: Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah and Vermont. If you live in a state where the direct shipment of wine violates the law, we suggest these alternatives..."
Q: Is there any cost to register on WineBid.com? Why do they ask for my credit card? A: WineBid.com is an auction site, and as part of registering they want to be sure they can handle any bid a user makes. That said, there are no fees to register, and your credit card is only charged if you have bidding activity on WineBid.com.
Q: I registered separately for WineBid.com. Now how do I get the values to show up in CellarTracker? A: If you are a paying CellarTracker user, it is pretty simple. Just go to the Manage Subscriptions page and click on the CLICK TO SIGNUP button. You will need to press the UPDATE button and login once per year to reactivate the WineBid data.
Q: How can I find out if the wine in question is available on WineBid.com? A: On the wine detail page there is a hyperlink showing the name of the wine. This will search the current WineBid.com auction for any lots matching that unit ID.
Q: Do you store successive price points so we can see historical gains? A: Yes, we have quarterly average selling prices going back to Q1-2003. You can see this history by drilling down to the valuation drilldown as in this example. The top-level valuation that is shown represents the most recent quarterly data available for a given size of that wine.
Here are some specific facts about the auction pricing information from WineBid.com.
The data is based on the quarterly average hammer price of auction lots. The quarterly averages go back to Q1-2003 (quarter ending 3/31/2003), and the most recently available quarter 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 adjusted to include the 15% commission (and thus show the effective sale price before tax and shipping).
The data is up to date as of 9/30/2008 and is updated quarterly (usually within a few days of quarter end).
We have 223,927 quarters of data for 74,051 distinct wines and have mapped 92.11% of this or ~68,207 wine valuations. We will continue to map the data to get as close to 100% as possible.
Only 1 sale was required in a quarter to surface a hammer price, although most wines have many more. The number of sales is not exposed.
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 or Italian Lire).
Q: How many wines have community values? A: As of 10/5/2008, there are ~159,563 wines with community valuations.
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