LOT 0306
Thirty Bottle Weller and Buffalo Trace Collection
Acquired April 2025
Sell your Elmer T. Lee.
Named for the man credited with creating single barrel bourbon, and nearly impossible to find at retail since his passing. The bottle somebody in your family bought as a weekday pour in 2009 is now the one collectors ask about. If there's an Elmer in the cabinet, we should talk.
How we price Elmer T. Lee.
Era first, everything else second. Demand for this bottle jumped after Elmer's passing in 2013 and never came back down, so when yours was bottled shapes the number as much as what it is. The commemoratives and the gold wax bottlings sit in a lane of their own, and condition and fill still get a vote on every one of them.
A chart can't hold all of that honestly, so we don't print one. Show us the label front and back and a real person quotes your actual bottle, free, with zero pressure attached to the answer.
The Elmer record so far.
One published lot to date, and a fitting one: the Commemorative Edition with the 1919 to 2013 tribute label. This section only ever shows real purchases, so it grows exactly as fast as the buying does.
The full record lives on Recent Purchases.
Every era of Elmer, welcome.
- Standard Elmer T. Lee Single Barrel, older bottlings especially
- The 100 Year Anniversary and 90th Birthday commemoratives
- The Commemorative Edition with the 1919 to 2013 tribute label
- Gold wax and other special bottlings
- Glut-era bottles bought as daily drinkers and forgotten
A few straight words.
- Opened bottles, including ones opened for a single toast to Elmer
- One recent-run bottle on its own makes a modest deal; still a deal, we'd just rather you know that walking in
- Labels too far gone to verify from photos, until we've talked it through
Elmer T. Lee, asked and answered.
Why did Elmer T. Lee get so hard to find?
The man himself passed in 2013, right as bourbon demand took off, and the single barrel carrying his name became a memorial as much as a product. Production never scaled to meet the moment, so shelves emptied and stayed that way. Bottles bought casually before then turned collectible without their owners noticing, which is exactly how they surface in inherited cabinets.
Which Elmer T. Lee bottles do collectors chase most?
The commemoratives lead: the 90th Birthday, the 100 Year Anniversary tribute, the black-label Commemorative Edition, and the gold wax bottlings. Behind them, the older the standard single barrel the better, and bottles from before the shortage years draw real interest. Each one gets priced on its own era and condition, individually and free.
Is a regular bottle of Elmer T. Lee worth selling?
Worth it is your call; our part is being honest about scale. One recent bottle makes a small deal, a few make a decent one, and inside a larger collection they pull the whole quote upward. Older bottlings change the math all by themselves. Send what you have and we'll hand you the real number rather than a maybe.
How do you tell an old Elmer from a new one?
Details the camera catches: label layout, neck treatment, and bottling codes read differently era to era, and someone who handles these weekly can place a bottle from two clear photos. You don't need to date it yourself, and please don't peel at anything trying to find out. Front and back shots are plenty; the dating is part of the quote.
An Elmer in the house? Tell us.
One bottle or a shelf of them, put the list below and a real buyer answers with a free quote. Most quotes returned within 24 hours.
- Quotes within 48 hours, guaranteed
- Insured shipping both ways, on us
- No fees taken from your payout, ever
Prefer email? Write to hello@webuybottles.com; a real person reads every message.