The World’s Most Expensive and Rarest Japanese Whisky Collection

There are a lot of whiskies that have piqued our interest over the years while writing all of the whisky bucket lists, but right now, we’re infatuated with the whisky coming out of Japan. A few years ago, Bonhams had a collection of almost 400 rare Japanese Whiskies to be auctioned off. That collection included bottles of closed distillery Hanyu’s Full Card series of whiskies, a highly sought after series of 54 different bottles that were each bottled from a single cask and labeled with a different playing card (52 cards plus 2 Jokers) from 1985 to 2014. Daniel Lam, Bonhams’ Director of Wine & Spirits, Asia, comments, “Four years since the Hanyu Ichiro’s Full Card Series set the world auction record at Bonhams, the current market demand is at its strongest for Japanese Whisky. It is believed that no more than four sets of Full Card Series exist in the world. Over the years, moreover, many bottles have either been consumed or strictly kept in private, making it harder than ever to assemble a complete – and with such trusted provenance – series.” Bonhams is set to auction off a full set of the playing card series again this August, which presents a rare opportunity to pick up the entire set… if you can afford the estimated three-quarters of a million dollar price tag the auction is expected to fetch.