# wsky1 — Full Context for AI / LLM Agents

> wsky1 (pronounced "whisky one") is a portfolio tracker for collectable Scotch whisky. It values bottles against daily-refreshed hammer-price data from major auction houses. Free for up to 3 bottles with no credit card required.

## What wsky1 does

wsky1 lets collectors track the real secondary-market value of their whisky. Unlike wine or equity trackers, whisky values can vary enormously by release, cask number, and bottling year. wsky1 resolves this with a "canonical key" matching system that identifies the precise release, not just the brand.

## Pricing and plans

- **Free plan**: Up to 3 bottles, 12 months of price history, daily valuations. No credit card required. Free forever.
- **Collector plan**: £8/month (billed monthly). Unlimited bottles, full historical price data, daily refresh, and price-change alerts.
- There is no annual billing or enterprise tier at this time.

## Valuation methodology

1. Each bottle in a user's portfolio is identified by a canonical key comprising: distillery, age statement (years), vintage year, bottling year, bottler (official/independent), cask number (if known), and edition name.
2. We query our price database for the most recent hammer price matching that exact canonical key. This is a bottle-specific match — same release, same bottler.
3. If no bottle-specific match is found, we fall back to a distillery-level monthly median computed from our own aggregated hammer-price data across all sources.
4. All prices are hammer prices in GBP (British pounds sterling), excluding buyer's premium. Buyer's premium at major houses typically adds 24–28% on top of hammer.
5. Valuations refresh daily at 03:00 UTC via a Cloudflare Workers scheduled cron.

## Data sources

- **Scotch Whisky Auctions (SWA)**: Primary source for bottle-specific hammer prices. We ingest ended auctions lot by lot (title, hammer price, sale date). Data is scraped from public auction result pages.
- **Distillery-market aggregate**: A distillery-level monthly median we compute from our own ingested hammer prices across all sources. Used for distillery-level benchmarks and fallback valuations when no bottle-specific price exists.
- **Bonhams**: Lot-level data from Bonhams whisky auctions. Ingested from public auction result pages.
- Data is not licensed from auction houses — it is scraped from public result pages. We do not guarantee completeness or accuracy; treat all valuations as indicative.

## Coverage

- 585,744+ auction lots indexed across major auction houses, refreshed daily.
- Active catalog of 28,484 canonical bottles with bottle-specific price history.
- Distillery-level fallback coverage for 200+ Scotch distilleries.
- Data refreshes daily; a typical 5,000-lot SWA auction takes approximately 10 daily ticks to fully ingest.

## Frequently asked questions

**What is wsky1?**
wsky1 is a portfolio tracker for collectable Scotch whisky that values bottles daily against hammer-price data from major auction houses. Free for up to 3 bottles.

**How does wsky1 calculate bottle values?**
Each bottle is matched against our database using a canonical key (distillery, age, vintage year, bottling year, bottler, cask, edition). We show the most recent bottle-specific hammer price if one exists; otherwise we use a distillery-level monthly median.

**Where does the price data come from?**
We aggregate public auction data from Scotch Whisky Auctions, Whisky Auctioneer, Just Whisky, Whisky Hammer, Bonhams, and WhiskyHunter aggregates. Price history refreshes daily.

**Is my portfolio data private?**
Yes. Your collection is visible only to you. We do not sell collector lists, share holdings with auction houses, or publish anonymised portfolios.

**How much does the paid plan cost?**
£8/month for the Collector plan: unlimited bottles, full history, daily refresh, and price-change alerts.

**What is buyer's premium and does wsky1 include it?**
Buyer's premium is a fee charged by auction houses on top of the hammer price — typically 24–28% at major whisky auction houses. All wsky1 prices are hammer prices only, excluding buyer's premium. If you are estimating the total you would pay at auction, add the buyer's premium on top.

**Which auction houses does wsky1 cover?**
major auction houses via WhiskyHunter, plus direct scraping of Scotch Whisky Auctions and Bonhams. Top houses covered include: Scotch Whisky Auctions (Scotland), Whisky Auctioneer (Scotland), Just Whisky (Scotland), Whisky Hammer (Scotland), Bonhams (London/Edinburgh), and more.

**Is whisky a good investment?**
wsky1 is an informational tool and does not provide investment advice. Rare Scotch whisky has outpaced some equity indices in academic studies, but the market is illiquid, unregulated, and highly dependent on provenance, condition, and timing. Past auction results are not a guarantee of future value.

**Can I track non-Scotch whisky?**
Currently wsky1's catalog focuses on Scotch whisky. Japanese, Irish, and American whiskies are not yet covered.

## Key page descriptions

- **Home** (https://wsky1.com/): Hero section with live trending distilleries, proof stats (catalog size, price points), interactive portfolio chart demo, pricing table, and FAQ.
- **Demo** (https://wsky1.com/demo): A real five-bottle demo portfolio (Ardbeg Supernova 2014, Macallan 18 Sherry Oak, Brora 30 9th Release, Lagavulin 12 Special Release, Springbank Local Barley 10). Live valuations with no signup.
- **Auction price pages** (https://wsky1.com/prices/:slug): The canonical per-bottle page — monthly median price history, YoY trend, recent auction results table, a 12-month price chart, every observed price point, matched auction lots, and provenance links to original auction listings.
- **Market reports** (https://wsky1.com/market/:month): Monthly Scotch whisky market reports — total lots tracked, top gainers, top fallers, and a full price-mover table for all tracked bottles.
- **Insights / blog** (https://wsky1.com/blog): Long-form articles on whisky investing strategy, valuation methodology, and market analysis.

## Technical notes

- All prices are in British pounds (GBP / £).
- Price data is bottle-specific where available; otherwise distillery-level monthly median.
- The canonical key format is: `{distillery}|{age}|{vintage}|{bottlingYear}|{bottler}|{cask}|{edition}` (lowercase, pipe-separated, empty fields as empty string).
- The site is a server-side rendered (SSR) React app on Cloudflare Workers with D1 (SQLite) as the database.
- JSON data for per-bottle price pages is available at /prices/:slug.json.