Auto Valuation

<TableOfContents>
  
= Overview =
CellarTracker allows users, if they so choose, to independently track the 
current market value of their cellar as distinct from the purchase price 
(a.k.a. acquisition cost). This is **primarily useful for insurance purposes** 
but also to keep tabs on how different wines are appreciating. There are 
several features that all together comprise this new Auto-Valuation feature.
  
  * **User entered valuations:** Users can enter their own valuations for any 
wine in their collection. By default, entered values are for 750ml bottles and 
are proportionally applied to other bottles sizes. You can also specify 
specific values per size.
  * **Wine Market Journal (WMJ) quarterly average:** CellarTracker includes a 
large database of average auction prices based on auction results compiled from 
all major auction houses by the WMJ. [AutoValuation#h3 Click here to read more 
specifics] on this auction pricing data. //(NOTE: This is only available to 
members of the CellarTracker community who have made payments in the past year. 
This also requires the user to do a 1-click signup and share their email with 
the WMJ.//
  * **Community valuations:** The site now exposes the average valuation (or 
purchase price if valuation is not specified) of users of the site if two or 
more users with "English (United States)" as their locale have 
entered prices or values. (NOTE: This is only available to members of the 
CellarTracker community who have made payments in the past year.)
  * **Average purchase price:** The site allows you to enter prices for 
specific purchases and then maintains an average acquisition price for each 
user.
  * **'Cascading' values:** OK, this is the good part! For each US user the 
site automatically picks among the above alternatives, in the order specified, 
to generate a per-wine value. And then all of the inventory and consumption 
summary views for that user can be set to show the price, value or price AND 
value at the same time.
  * **Other tools:** The site has a 
[http://www.cellartracker.com/list.asp?table=BulkValue bulk valuation view] 
where you can review all of the cascading values and override them if you so 
choose with user valuations. There are also 
[http://www.cellartracker.com/settings.asp?Setting=PriceDisplay display 
settings] to hide this altogether, just show price, just show value or show 
price and value at the same time.
  
= General Questions =
**Q: How can I see the value of my entire cellar?**<br>
**A:** In your main cellar view you see the value listed on a per/bottle and 
wine basis with a total shown in the very last row. To see everything totaled 
and grouped in different ways, choose any entry from the Summarize by dropdown 
at the top of the screen: [http://www.cellartracker.com/list.asp?table=Region 
Region], [http://www.cellartracker.com/list.asp?table=Producer Producer], 
[http://www.cellartracker.com/list.asp?table=Varietal Varietal], 
[http://www.cellartracker.com/list.asp?table=Type Type], 
[http://www.cellartracker.com/list.asp?table=Location Storage Location] 
etc.<br>
<br>
**Q: What if I disagree with the valuation that is shown for my 
wine?**<br>
**A:** No problem. Simply go to the 
[http://www.cellartracker.com/list.asp?table=BulkValue bulk valuation view] and 
add your own valuation. This has the dual effect of overriding any other 
valuations AND making the community average smarter for everyone 
else.<br>
<br>
**Q: What does this feature cost?**<br>
**A:** This feature is the first paid-only feature on the site. CellarTracker 
itself is free, but users are encouraged to make annual, voluntary payments 
[VoluntaryPayment as described here]. In order to see community valuations or 
to register for the Wine Market Journal auction data, you need to have paid in 
the past 12 months.<br>
<br>
**Q: What is your current international support and what are your future 
plans?**<br>
**A:** Currently CellarTracker is somewhat limited with regard to international 
currency support. Each user, [http://www.cellartracker.com/displayoptions.asp 
in their profile], can choose a locale. This controls the formatting of 
currency and dates on the site. If the user's locale is "English (United 
States)" then all of the features are fully supported. Otherwise, users 
can see auction and community pricing data in US dollars, but the cascading 
values do not include these sources. In the future we hope to extend the site 
to allow users to choose currencies per-purchase and also to do currency 
conversion between the supported currencies for the entire feature described 
above. This may take a little while though.<br>
<br>
**Q: Can I generate advanced reports such as "wines where the auction 
price is X% higher than average purchase price"?**<br>
**A:** Not at this time, but if the feature takes off we hope to add more 
nuances like this.<br>
<br>
**Q: I see a valuation column in the [ExcelDownload Excel web query]. What is 
this based on?**<br>
**A:** This is the cascaded valuation, so it potentially is comprised of all of 
the data described above. Also, in addition to the 'cascaded' valuation, based 
on user feedback we have added separate columns for user-entered valuations, 
community valuations and average auction price.<br>
<br>
**Q: What is the exact cascade sequence?**<br>
**A:**
  1. User entered values matching the bottle size
  1. User entered 750ml values proportionally converted to match the bottle size
  1. WMJ auction price matching the bottle size
  1. WMJ auction price for 750ml bottles proportionally converted to match the 
bottle size
  1. Community average valuation matching the bottle size
  1. Community average valuation for 750ml bottles proportionally converted to 
match the bottle size
  1. Purchase price* matching the bottle size
  1. Purchase price* proportionally converted to match the bottle size
  1. Zero value shown
  
//* Purchase prices shown in the wine summary views are based in the average 
purchase price for a wine. In the consumption and individual bottle views, the 
specific price from any associated purchase is shown before the average 
price.//
  
= Wine Market Journal specifics =
**Q: Is there any cost to register with the Wine Market Journal 
(WMJ)?**<br>
**A:** To turn on the WMJ data in CellarTracker you do have to do a 1-time
signup and share your email address. The WMJ does offer a premium subscription,
but users are under no obligation address with the WMJ. Also, to subscribe. We
do see a lot of synergy between CellarTracker and richer drilldown on the WMJ
site requires a nominal $9.95 annual or $1.95 monthly fee for a standard
subscription. Professional subscriptions with richer content, access to their
new mobile site and do intend to offer tighter integration and richer data
drilldown unlimited queries are available for co-subscribers.<br> $129.95
annually, or $19.95 monthly.<br>
<br>
**Q: I registered separately for the WMJ. Now how do I get the values to show 
up in CellarTracker?**<br>
**A:** This is very easy. Just go to http://www.cellartracker.com/wmj_opt.asp 
to activate the data in CellarTracker.<br>
<br>
**Q: Do you store successive price points so we can see historical 
gains?**<br>
**A:** The WMJ has data going back to 1997. On CellarTracker we expose the most 
recent quarter of data and up to 6 months of history. Subscribers to the WMJ 
can also go to their site to see the full pricing history.<br>
<br>
Here are some specific facts about the auction pricing information from the WMJ:
  * The data is based on the quarterly average hammer price of auction lots. 
The quarterly averages go back to 1997, and the most recently available quarter 
is used for the valuation.
  * Data is for specific vintages and formats (375ml, 750ml, 1.5L etc.) of a 
given wine. All vintage mappings match the wine the data is linked to.
  * Prices are grossed up to represent cost to the buyer, inclusive of all 
buyer's premiums as charged by each auction house.
  * The data is up to date as of 12/31/2011 and is updated quarterly.
  * We have data on nearly 85,000 wines and have mapped 100% of this.
  * Only 1 sale was required in a quarter to surface a hammer price, although 
most wines have many more. The number of sales is not exposed on CellarTracker, 
but subscribers to the WMJ have rich drilldown ability to see the underlying 
auction data.
  
= Community Valuation specifics =
**Q: I am concerned that other users can see information about my cellar due to 
the community valuation support. Can I hide this?**<br>
**A:** Yes, each user can choose to hide their handle from the inventory, 
consumption and purchase information that is shown on the site. Your data is 
still used to calculate the averages, but users won’t know this. You can 
[http://www.cellartracker.com/forum/tm.asp?m=793 read about the privacy options 
here].<br>
<br>
**Q: Do you do anything to validate the community data?**<br>
**A:** Not really. However, the values are weeded to those within two standard 
deviations. This throws out extreme outliers (such as if a user has their 
locale set to the US but is entering values in Japanese Yen or Italian 
Lire).<br>
<br>
**Q: How many wines have community values?**<br>
**A:** As of 1/17/2012, there are ~377,000 wines with community valuations.
  
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