The Record Breaking Miniature
By many standards, when a tiny 5cl bottle of whisky sells for a record £5600 you might wonder whether nothing would ever be the same again. If that miniature happens to be a Springbank single malt whisky distilled in 1919 then many whisky enthusiasts will merely shrug in a ‘sounds about right’ sort of way. This is of course because this miniature is one of the rarest single malts ever released. Just 24 70cl bottles of this famous liquid were bottled at the distillery in 1970 and it was once in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s most expensive whisky. While standard sized formats have become inaccessible for many enthusiasts to buy, the miniature version is a magnificent museum worthy piece of whisky history.
The Sukhinder Singh Miniature Collection
The Sukhinder Singh Miniature Collection included over 438 lots from his collection of whisky miniatures and memorabilia. The collection reached a tremendous £56732 after commission. The miniatures had been collected by Sukhinder during the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. He decided to sell a large proportion of his collection to make room for future purchases, keeping just one bottle from each distillery to be displayed in a cabinet with the rest of his collection.
There Were More Record Breaking Miniatures
As the auction came to a close we witnessed treasure hunters winning rare miniatures for as little as £2 amongst the many other record breaking lots in the sale, such as an extremely rare and beautiful Glenfiddich Special bottled in the 1940s, complete with original box, which sold for £2530 including buyer’s commission and a stunning Laphroaig Old Scotch Whisky bottled in the 1950s which eventually went for £1268.
Not Just Miniatures
With 2421 lots in our latest auction the oldest and rarest samples from closed and sought after distilleries have never been more accessible and we have seen a wonderful renaissance in the appreciation of rare whisky miniatures. However our buyers don’t just have an appetite for miniatures. The most entertaining lots of the auction are the oddities that turn up amongst the whisky memorabilia. Among them we discovered ephemera such as the Johnnie Walker Award For A Hole In One Saltford Golf Links, 24 May 1928 and Patents for Inventions Class 21, Casks and Barrels 1855-1866 University of Manchester Library 1905 and, my personal favourite, a Distillery Control Panel with cut out spaces for all the dials, levers and nobs and complete with labels.
