Yamazaki Distillery (Photo credit: The House of Suntory) How The House of Suntory invented Japanese whisky Today, the same liquid in Singapore is S$379, if you can even find it. In 2011, I saw bottles of Yamazaki’s 12-year-old single malt discounted to US$40 (SG$54) at a supermarket in the US. In 2018, a slightly younger 50-year-old Yamazaki fetched US$300,000 (S$406,000) in Hong Kong. One example was auctioned off in Amsterdam for more than a million Singapore dollars. In 2020, the brand released Yamazaki 55 Years Old, currently the world’s oldest Japanese whisky, at an initial price of JP¥3.3 million (S$30,000). If he had any clue to how successful his spirits have become, he might have laid out the path entirely in gold. It has been 100 years since Suntory founder Shinjiro Torii established Yamazaki with the goal of making premium Japanese whisky. A disused pot still, its black coat as moody as the grey March sky, points to the birthplace of Japanese whisky. After a brief walk through a charmingly quaint village, a chimney peeks out from behind budding spring trees. At a local okonomiyaki restaurant, bottles of The House of Suntory’s illustrious whiskies are tucked away on a high shelf. Discreet signs around the station direct people where to go. So now you know the story of the Beam’s Collectors Editions.It first requires a 30-minute train ride from Japan’s historic capital of Kyoto, and it gradually unfurls from there. The list price is taken from “Mario’s Price Guide to Modern Bottles” current edition (July-Sept. For easy reference, you can find the year in the bottom on each bottle. The last several years were devoted to duck stamps (‘84-’86) and these have a slightly higher value of $7.00-8.00. Later volumes included pictures of dogs (‘77) and waterfowl (‘80), with similar values of approximately $5.00. Volumes 6 through 11 (1971–76) include paintings as well as pictDeterming Values of Jim Beam Bottlesures of birds (‘74), fish (‘75) and wildlife (‘76). Volume 5 (1970), 6 different paintings, is valued at $3.00. Volumes 3 & 4 (1968-69) each continued 8 different paintings and are only valued as $4.00 each. Volumes 1 & 2 (1966-67) each contained 4 different paintings and are valued at $4.00 each. There are over 80 bottles in the entire collection. Today, some 30 some years later, these bottles (full or empty) still aren’t worth any more than when they were introduced.Įach series is known as a “volume”. The contents of the decanter were still the high quality but the container was cheap. But like many other things in life, you get what you pay for. The “Collector Editions” were inexpensive and the dealer could buy them in quantity, create a nice display near the cash register and price the pint bottles at $5.95 to appeal to his customers. This, in turn, had a direct impact on the prices that the decanters were bringing at that time. This had a huge bearing on the popularity of the hobby at the time as the distributor reps (many of them collected also) would get the owners excited about new intros and the owners would pass this excitement onto their customers. Liquor store shelves were well stocked with these decanters and many of the store owners were collectors themselves. They were ugly to say the least but in 1966 the hobby of bottle collecting was enjoying significant growth, with Beam and other bottle clubs popping up everywhere. These were pint size bottles with a blue plastic lid that screwed off. Painting in the middle of the bottle and a label under the painting. The bottles in the first series were coated with a velvet or felt-like material that was blue with the The bottles were boxed in a simple but colorful box with an open front so that the painting on the decanter was visible. The first was a series of four different bottles with paintings from famous artists. Each year Beam would introduce a new “collection” under this heading. They were called “Beam Collector Editions”. In 1966, Jim Beam introduced what was to become one of their longest running collections of bottles. I receive many inquiries regarding this series that Beam made in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s, and are the most common of the Beam decanters. In an effort to help the non-collector or novice, I’m going to dedicate this article to the infamous Jim Beam Collectors Edition decanters.
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