What I observed in the past few months that bottles around the 1k € mark have almost universally dropped at least 15% (and it’s a steady drop still ongoing, not a fluke in pricing). I don’t think the notion that people have less discretionary income or that inflation bites into their budgets applies to these bottles (if you’re spending 1k €+ on one bottle of booze you’re more than likely not to be wage-slave). Decreasing number of collectors also won’t explain it since the remaining would be just as willing to spend and they would still pump each others’ bids. So I’m left scratching my head about what’s going on with the the more expensive bottles.
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I think both Marc and Happy are right, it’s a combination of two post-covid effects:
QT and macro economics explain why the expensive and highly collectible bottles go down; it’s less about disposable income, it’s just that rum now perform relatively worse than other asset classes (bonds, but also just stocks as stocks have cheapened way before this trend arrived to run). This led to investors pull money out which in turn led prices sink, which made other folks see the decline and “panic sell” or just not buy for resell right now.
The other effect is the rebound from covid for collectors and consumers; people stocked up, spend a lot during covid. Now shelf space gets low, gains and joy from yet another bottle get marginalized, and there are other things missed out that people want to catch up. This leads to less desire to buy and therefore weakens demand.
I personally observed both effects for my own collection. I think the quality distilleries will survive, as do quality IBs (they’ll get more stock). IBs and distilleries asking for prices based on secondary market will be in trouble though (colours of rum, distillia), as they will not be attractive to consumers, collectors or investors
My personal opinion. Might be wrong. Dont sue me 
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And you really think that, for example, Velier Caroni prices were moved by institutional investors who are now moving out? Somewhat hard to imagine for such a fringe asset as Rum is.
I personally am still as happy as with my first bottle; shelf space, while may be limited, will always found a tiny spot to stash one more bottle and I was never really into these new IBs. I guess may be opposites. 
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How do you know what your looking at on eBay is legitimate?
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I look at the seller’s ratings. I realize that this is not an exact price research, but you get a feeling for tendencies.
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Happy to see prices fall a bit, as I purchase bottles to open and therefore not really worrying about a monetary return. Maybe one day that Skeldon 1978 will be below $10K 
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Well, my guess is that there are still strong reasons for which the prices will increase. There will be no more Velier Demeraras (but there might be more Caronis). People do open and drink the old bottles. They become more rare and you know… 
.
The market might have been growing too rapidly, especially with the new IBs, and now it experiences a correction. But I don’t believe this down trend will be here for long.
And, not to blame everything in the IBs, for instance, Foursquare new yearly releases were actually sold for higher prices on primary market than the previous ones on auctions.
I have a feeling of inflation on rum uniqueness. It turns out that there are more 1983 Hampdens hidden somewhere. Since four more 1983s have been released to date, how can a price of Kill Devil, released as the first one, hold. It is now 5x less unique!
We still witness attempts to capitalize on the big names. I don’t say these are bad rums but over the last several years there’s “Versailles” written on anything. Even the LBI marque has seen a modern day sequel. It’s great because there’s more quality rum and clearer labeling but now your Skeldon (imagine you have one 
) is one of 10, not one of 2, in existence. It influences the price of the new releases, but it also holds down the price of the old ones. If bloggers would consistently say that El Dorado 2000 Skeldon is tastier than Velier’s, are you still willing to pay 100 (real number) times more?
So I think FOMO 
if not for the bottles, which will be around all the time, a hunt for good prices will begin soon.
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I sold two bottles in this month auction, I didn’t want to open anymore (RX11981 and RX9858). The achieved prices are ok. Last month auction the RX11981 was sold for 110 GBP more 
So maybe you’re interested in the sellers invoice as well
We have a Listing Fee of 6 GBP + VAT for each bottle, the seller’s commission is 5%. The result is roughly 210€ and pretty much what I paid for both bottles.
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I was bidding just on one bottle RX4382 and might have pushed it a bit 
but was outbid at the end. At least this gem reached an all time high.
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Not quite. That would be £1,761 in April 21 for the 70cl and - if that counts - even £2,200 for the 35cl version in Mai 21 (£500 more for half size – genius!) … but you pushed it close 
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you are right, even if described as 35cl it was the 70cl bottle. Question is, if stats are then correct on RX and RA?
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Excellent question! I think the auction results do not handle different bottle sizes correctly. But the database is also handling this inconsistently.
Example:
For the Velier Magnum Series, seperate DB entries exist for the 0,7l and the 1,5l version. Here, prices can thoretically be mapped accordingly (if detected correctly).
For the Caroni Employees there are no separate entries for the 0,2l and the 0,1l small versions. Here the problem exists that a 0,2l price may be mapped to 0,7l bottle. If users enter a 0,2l bottle it is shown with a small exclamation mark symbol - havent seen this for auction results.
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The prices on RA seem to be considerably lower than the same period last year, so I feel like I got a couple of bargains…
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Bought two bottles this time.
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Forgot on Monday it was auction day and that was that. Fortunately the bottle I was eyeballing didn’t exactly go lower than before so no big loss.
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in der gestrigen RT Auktion hatte ich eine ‚lustige‘ Verwechslung gesehen: angeboten wurde der Rasta Morris ‚from the other Trinidad distillery’, d.h. der TDL, der jedoch als Caroni ausgezeichnet war, was dann zu dem stolzen Ergebnis von 321 EUR führte…
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Es steht sogar Trinidad Distillers auf der Flasche.
Das ist schon übel m.E.
Den Betreibern darf sowas eigentlich nicht passieren und als Kunde würde ich mich maßlos ärgern. Allerdings würde ich auch keine 300 auf eine Flasche bieten von der ich nicht genau wüsste, dass es die ist, die ich haben will.
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ja, es steht ‚from the other Trinidad Distillery‘ drauf. Beim
RM Caroni wiederum steht fett ‚Caroni‘ drauf. Das sollte eigentlich nicht passieren, und wenn sie es nicht genau wissen, sollten sie besser in der RX Datenbank nachschauen
Bei anderen Auktionen waren noch ein paar Fehler drin, sollte eigentlich nicht passieren. Ich vermute aber, hier kann der Käufer es ohne Probleme zurückgeben. Vielleicht merkt er es aber auch gar nicht, mit den dreckigen Noten kann der TDL ja auch ganz gut punkten…
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vor allem sind die Preise weiter unter Druck
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