Market intelligence · Quarterly benchmark
A named benchmark for the collectable Scotch whisky market — the hammer-price performance of the most actively traded blue-chip expressions, built from 431,813 auction lots across 31+ houses. Published quarterly.
Inaugural reading · Q2 2026 · to May 2026
CSI Blue-Chip 10 · base 1,000
1,105
12-month
+10.5%
3-month
-0.4%
1-month
volatile
The blue chips held and gained while the broad market fell — a textbook flight to liquidity in a softening market.
For press & citation
“The wsky1 Collectable Scotch Index, a benchmark built from 431,813 auction lots, opened its first reading up +10.5% over the trailing twelve months — even as 58% of all tracked expressions fell over the same period. The collectable Scotch market has bifurcated: liquidity and value concentrated into a blue-chip core while the long tail, and Japanese whisky in particular, sold off hard.”
The CSI Blue-Chip 10 is a lot-volume-weighted basket of the ten most actively traded expressions in the dataset — the deepest, most liquid corner of the secondary market. Weighting by lot volume means the index reflects where money actually moves, not where a single trophy bottle spiked.
| Constituent | Median hammer | Lots | 12-month | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Macallan | £240 | 1,908 | +9.1% | 31.9% |
| Springbank | £190 | 778 | +4.4% | 13.0% |
| Ardbeg | £127 | 542 | -0.7% | 9.1% |
| Bowmore | £182 | 529 | +13.5% | 8.9% |
| Glenfiddich | £65 | 437 | -7.1% | 7.3% |
| Highland Park | £85 | 432 | +70.0% | 7.2% |
| Bruichladdich | £90 | 374 | +5.9% | 6.3% |
| Laphroaig | £120 | 352 | +15.7% | 5.9% |
| Glenmorangie | £63 | 327 | -9.8% | 5.5% |
| GlenDronach | £180 | 294 | +12.5% | 4.9% |
| Basket | — | 5,973 | +10.5% | 100% |
Equal-weighted, the basket reads +11.3%; the median constituent move is +7.5%. Lot volume is the weight, so the liquid core dominates the reading.
1
Across the trailing twelve months, 58% of all tracked expressions fell and only 33% rose (of 5,012 with a clean year-on-year comparison). Yet the blue-chip basket was up ~10%. The market isn't uniformly weak — it's narrowing. Collectors and flippers are crowding into the liquid, name-brand core and abandoning the speculative long tail.
2
The steepest declines were Japanese: Yamazaki Distiller's Reserve −99.2% (to a £40 median), Suntory White −98.3%, Japanese blended malt broadly −96%+. The post-2020 bubble continues to deflate at the entry/mid tier, even as a few aged Yamazaki bottlings move the other way — the category is splitting just as the wider market is.
3
Macallan alone changed hands 2,873 times in the window — more than the next two distilleries combined. Trading is dominated by a familiar roster (Macallan, Springbank, Ardbeg, Bowmore, Glenfiddich). For a collector, liquidity is the asset: these are the bottles you can actually sell when you want to.
Trophy hammers
Credible risers
The wsky1 Collectable Scotch Index is free to cite with attribution to wsky1 and a link to wsky1.com/market/index. For the underlying dataset, methodology detail, custom cuts (by distillery, region, age or vintage) or an interview, contact support@wsky1.com. See the supporting monthly market reports for the full per-month series.
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