The Bar Towel

JerCraigs wrote:

grub wrote: Three Floyds hardly revels in the popularity - they're just as unhappy about having Dark Lord on ebay as everyone else.
... As a brewer, you just want to get your beer into the hands of those that will drink and enjoy it, and not into the hands of those who just want to ransom it off to the highest bidder.

The "we can't just make more" argument is a bit weak Russ, for most breweries anyway. What they really mean is "If we double production for SuperRareBeer, we'd have to cut production of LessCrazyRare beer.

There are many reasons, and that's one of them. If LessCrazyRare beer is the one that pays the bills, then you really _can't_ cut its production and survive. Everyone strives to increase production (both of SuperRare and LessCrazyRare), but there are always limits of one sort or another, and demand is always growing faster than capacity can increase. Like I said, if the brewers could just magically have 100x the #bottles and distribute it nation-wide, everyone would be happy and the ebay market would disappear. That's just never going to happen.

I'm not sure I really understand the scale of the fuss.

What % of the bottles from these rare beers end up going this route? Surely it's an incredibly small percentage.

I tend to wonder if some of this fuss from the brewers/wine makers/others in the same boat isn't simple jealousy. They sell something for $20, and it has to grate on them that someone else can turn it around and sell it for multiples of that.

If the percentage of bottles going for multiple times the original price is high, you have probably priced your product wrong. If the % is low, seems to me you should just have a beer and not get too worked up about it. Be happy someone loves your beer that much. Nobody's paying me multiple times what I'm worth (ok, maybe they are, but as long as my employer doesn't know all's good!).