Are Limited Editions Bad For WHiskey?

I begin this column with a question- Are limited edition releases bad for whiskey? I’ve been grappling with this question, and writing this piece which I started in January 2023. Before I get into my answer, I want to look back to 1996 and share a cautionary tale.

1996 was a watershed year for collectors, not whiskey collectors, but for Star Trek action figure collectors. Playmates Toys had the toy license to manufacture and sell action figures from the various Star Trek TV shows, and motion pictures. These toys were wildly popular, and Playmates had a vested interest to keep it that way.

Keep in mind that this was before eBay had launched, or any online marketplace other than message boards on AOL, Prodigy, or magazine advertisements. Most things collectors bought/sold/traded was done in comic shops, or fan conventions, finding things you really wanted for your collection was WORK. Each new release of a figure was met enthusiastically as fans dutifully went to their local shops to buy the new hot thing. There were some exclusives of course, and while “limited” they were obtainable and were usually just a main character with a different outfit so it wasn’t a huge deal if one didn’t have one right away. Eventually you could get it. Things were humming along nicely for Playmates, and collectors until…

Playmates decided to juice excitement by releasing a couple of very limited releases, incredibly exclusive in fact, an homage run of 1,701 pieces of two fan favorite characters, from fan favorite episodes. Typical releases were in the 10’s of thousands, so in an instant, Playmates had destroyed the segment of collectors that were up until that point, completists. To put it in whiskey perspective, consider verticals as a fair comparison, where nothing was hard to find, until one day a distillery said, “let’s make this really limited, to get people excited, and make it impossible to get.” (Note that I wrote this in July of 2023, before the latest Weller nonsense!).

The ask on eBay for these three is still $1,500 a piece, a far cry from what they once sold for.

There’s a good look back on this here. Notably of interest, the comments section. The 1701 release definitely juiced hype, but almost overnight, fans were outraged. Completists were horrified at the realization that their hobby, their passion, their joy, was now a futile pursuit, and would likely always have a couple of holes in it, unless they were well-heeled money people. Ultimately the 1701 series has been seen as the first of many fatal wounds inflicted (there were MORE exclusives afterwards), and coupled with several disastrous follow up decisions, ended the Playmates Star Trek line. Playmates desperately tried to win fans back by doing a 3-pack of these figures and releasing them in large quantities, but the damage was done, trust was eroded, and people had moved on.

I was once an avid action figure collector myself, mostly G.I. Joe, and Star Wars. Collecting has been in my blood since my early days of baseball cards. I’ve exited each of those hobbies when they became overwhelming in size (hmmm…. ). Exclusive and limited’s became nearly impossible to track down and robbed me of the joy of the hobby itself. While I wasn’t impacted directly by the 1701 Playmates figures, I had similar experiences in other collections, and the result was the same- Frustration. We all talk about FOMO, and for collectors it’s a dreadful thing that keeps us hooked and spending, but when we can’t get something, because of the extreme limitation (and price!) of the release, we get the red-ass over it.

Seven. Thousand. Five. Hundred. Dollars. MSRP. The 1701 of SazCo.

So what does this have to do with Whiskey?

I lamented in 2018 that we had entered into a collectors market, I recognized the signs not just on social media, but in my own home. What started as a desire to have a cool home bar selection and to try as many things I could possibly try, became FOMO on a massive scale, and the gravitational pull of the need for acquisition took over. It wasn’t enough to land one hard to find thing I wanted, but I had to have it ALL and backups. Here I find myself, years later, with a stupid collection that almost everyone would be horrified by or admire. I no longer am satisfied by the size of my collection, and I’m frequently irritated that I let ANOTHER collection build in my home.

Distilleries continue to put out exclusives and limiteds and they should because they can be fun, interesting and exciting. The downside is the collectors that can attain many of these now are all monied and connected. When was the last time you walked into a store and saw any BTAC on the shelf at MSRP? I’m not talking about the bottles in the back, with the owner waiting for you to come pick it up after they called you, but literally walked in, saw one, picked it up and paid for it? Me? That was 2009. Also, that was the last time. These bottles never see the shelves anymore unless they’re secondary priced. So this being the case, why the hell should I hunt for them?

Fred puts out his best of list every year, and it’s more and more like a price guide without the prices. It’s always BTAC, Pappy, Old Fitzgerald decanters… and I know that I’ll never be able to buy one at MSRP in a store. This is where the limiteds are no longer good for whiskey. I’m not just a collector, I’m an avid drinking enthusiast. I share. I’m the best type of customer for a distillery. I consume.

Heaven Hill making this permanent likely caused a lot of headaches and emptier wallets.

Early in 2022 I fundamentally understood (as I had so many times before in my collecting life), that the game was over, and it was time to exit. Get out of whiskey you say? No, of course not, but my days of unbridled acquisition are over. I have slowly been winding down my stupid amounts of opens, and I’m resetting the bar. I’ll get back to drinking a few at a time, and picking up the annual Overholts if I happen upon them.

When the market loses me, and others like me, the golden aura of the whiskey boom is going to dim. When mid-range collectors can’t play, they find another game. Will we the drinkers ever stop buying? Of course not, but what we will buy are the things we like, at reasonable prices, that are easily found. If you took all the “good stuff” off the market tomorrow, and I could still find Old Tub, and Knob Creek? I’d be fine. You’d be fine.

NOTE- I had the bones of this article assembled early 2023, but couldn’t find the ending. Thankfully Buffalo Trace decided to drop a new limited Weller release that will MSRP for $7,500 and provide me the whiskey equivalent of a 1701 Star Trek figure. The social media backlash has been interesting to watch, and it reminds me of the 1701 backlash quite a bit. Suddenly, the perfectly manicured Buffalo Trace aura of awesome has taken a very sizable hit. Sazerac likely won’t care one lick, just as Playmates didn’t, so convinced of their marketing genius.

To wrap it all up, are limited editions bad for whiskey? As always, there is nuance to this question. Is it bad for distilleries? Is it bad for you the whiskey insaniac? Is it bad for the whiskey drinker? The collector? Bourbon collecting is headed the way of Scotch, the limited editions will more and more find their way to the Sotheby’s crowd, and the distilleries will love the hype (and the giant money trucks making deliveries) for a time, but the drinkers, will be squeezed out entirely. As for the collectors, especially the completists working on their Weller verticals, the best way to piss off a collector is to render their collections incomplete.

Playmates learned this the hard way, certain distilleries might be about to.

- Mickey Pinstripe