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InVintory Help

Understanding individual market prices

Most wines in your collection carry a market value: the typical shop price for one bottle of that vintage today, before sales tax. Each one carries a source tag telling you where the number came from.

How we work out a market value

Section titled “How we work out a market value”
  1. Collect shop prices. Our pricing partners gather the prices shops around the world are asking for each wine and vintage.
  2. Take the middle price. We use the median of those prices for one 750 ml bottle, before sales tax and VAT.
  3. Match your bottle. The price is for your exact vintage and bottle size. If we only have a 750 ml price, we scale it up to your size, with a small premium for larger formats.
  4. Fill gaps. If our pricing partners have no price for your vintage, we estimate one from other vintages of the same wine and from similar wines from the same region.
  5. Your price wins. A price someone on your collection set always replaces ours.
  6. Convert. We convert it into your currency at the current exchange rate.

Use it to check whether a bottle is a good deal, and as a rough guide to what it might cost to replace your wine. It is a guide only, not a professional valuation — for insurance, get a professional valuation. It is not a selling price either: selling at auction or to a merchant usually brings in less. Why did my collection value change? covers this in more detail.

The source tag

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Tag What it means
Verified market value A price for this exact vintage from our pricing partners. The logo beside the tag links to the source.
Estimated market value Our pricing partners have no price for this exact vintage, so we estimated one (step 4).
Custom market value Someone on your collection set this price by hand. The tag still credits our own figure underneath, for comparison.

A price built from many shops is more reliable. One built from only a few shops, or from other vintages, is less certain. Very old vintages, rare wines and spirits are the most likely to be thinly listed.

Prices are per bottle format

Section titled “Prices are per bottle format”

Market values are stored per bottle size, so a magnum is priced as a magnum rather than as two bottles. The headline figure is for the size you hold the most of, and the card names it: / 750ml, / Magnum. Other sizes you own are listed underneath.

How the price has moved

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A wine’s Wine Guide also charts that vintage’s market price over time, so you can see whether it has been climbing or drifting. It is called Market price history on iPhone, iPad and Android, and sits inside the Market price section on the web app. On iPhone and iPad a wine with only a couple of prices behind it shows them as a dated list rather than a chart, and either way a Last updated line gives the date of the most recent one. An estimated market value has no history, so there is nothing to chart for it.

The rest of that page is covered in How to use the Wine Guide.

When there is no market value

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Some wines have none, and the app says so rather than guessing: None set on the wine, and We could not find a market value for this wine if you tap through. That usually means the wine is rare, or popular in a country where our pricing data is thin. A wine added to our database very recently may not have been priced yet.

A missing price does not leave a hole in your collection total: for those bottles we substitute the average bottle price across your collection, not your purchase price. If you would rather leave them out, switch off Estimate unpriced bottles in the collection’s settings — Understanding your total collection value shows where.

Set your own market value

Section titled “Set your own market value”

If a price looks wrong, replace it. Your figure applies to everyone on the collection and can be undone at any time.

  1. Open the wine from your collection.
  2. Tap the Market Value card.
  3. Tap the bottle size you want to price.
  4. Enter the amount, choose a currency, then tap Save.

Tap Reset on that same screen to go back to ours. You need editor access and at least one bottle of that vintage in the collection.

Collection → tap a wine → Market Value → tap a size → Save

Where to find it

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iPhone and iPad. The Market Value card on a wine’s detail screen, or Est. Value in its Wine Guide. Both open the Market Price screen.

Android. Open a wine and tap Average Price By Size.

Web. At app.invintory.com the Est. market value column edits inline, one line per size. The Wine Guide adds a Market Value section with Set custom market value and Reset to InVintory data.

Next steps

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