There's a whisky collection sitting in the UK right now that might never exist again. Not because someone's planning to drink it, but because finding another one just like it could be impossible.
Mark Littler Ltd, a whisky brokerage based in the United Kingdom, is handling the sale of what they're calling the world's only complete set of The Macallan Anniversary Malt series. The collection contains 19 bottles, and the asking price is £110,858, which converts to about $149,016.
Image credit: The Macallan
The owner is Danielle Smeyers, though she goes by Dany. She spent more than twenty years putting this set together, tracking down bottles one at a time.
How It All Started
The Macallan Anniversary Malt series holds a special place in scotch whisky history. When the distillery released the first bottle in 1983, they were doing something nobody had done before. It was the world's first distillery-released, vintage-dated 25-year-old single malt series.
Mark Littler, who founded the brokerage bearing his name, put it this way: "The Macallan Anniversary Malts are regarded by many as the most important whisky series ever released."
He explained the significance further: "When the Anniversary series was launched in 1983, single malt as a category was still relatively young. To release a structured, vintage-dated 25-year-old series at that moment was groundbreaking, and it's not overreaching to suggest that it changed the trajectory of premium scotch whisky."
The collection includes bottles with vintages spanning from the late 1950s through the mid-1970s. It also contains all the non-vintage editions that were released under the Anniversary Malt name.
Building the Collection Bottle by Bottle
Smeyers didn't wake up one day in the late 1990s and decide to hunt down every Anniversary Malt bottle ever made. Her journey started simpler than that, with a trip to Scotland.
"I didn't set out to build a complete set, I just fell in love with Macallan and that first Anniversary Malt epitomised their whisky for me," Smeyers said. "Then one bottle led to another, and it quietly became a very enjoyable mission."
What began as appreciation for one bottle turned into a two-decade pursuit. But Smeyers wasn't just grabbing any Anniversary Malt she could find. She had standards.
"I was always very particular," she explained. "I only bought bottles with excellent fill levels and original boxes. Because I never set out with the plan to own every bottle, when I did add something to the collection it always had to be the best example I could find."
That discipline matters now. Every single bottle in her collection has what collectors call an excellent fill level into the neck. Each one still has its original presentation box. For anyone who knows whisky collecting, that's not common with bottles this old.
Why This Collection Might Never Happen Again
Mark Littler has been in the whisky business long enough to see plenty of rare bottles cross his desk. He's handled hundreds of thousands of them throughout his career. But this collection stands apart.
"In my entire career, and after handling hundreds of thousands of bottles, I have never seen a complete set of Macallan Anniversary Malts appear for sale," Littler stated. "This is the only full set I am aware of anywhere in the world."
The completeness alone makes it special. Having all 19 bottles from the series in one place is achievement enough. But Littler pointed to something else that makes this particular set potentially irreplaceable.
"What makes this collection exceptional is not just completeness, but condition… it's debatable whether it could be recreated at all," he continued.
Think about what that means. These are bottles from a series that started over forty years ago. The whisky inside some of them was distilled in the late 1950s. Finding one Anniversary Malt in excellent condition with its original box is already a challenge. Finding all 19 that way might be beyond challenging. It might be impossible.
The whisky market has changed dramatically since Smeyers started collecting in the late 1990s. Prices have climbed. Availability has shrunk. Competition among collectors has intensified. The bottles Smeyers acquired over two decades simply aren't sitting on shelves waiting for someone to buy them anymore.
Even if someone had unlimited funds and unlimited time, tracking down each bottle in the condition Smeyers maintained might take longer than the twenty-plus years she invested. Or it might not happen at all.
The Decision to Sell
After finishing the set, Smeyers decided it was time to let someone else take ownership. For her, completing the collection provided a natural endpoint.
"Now the collection is complete there is a sense of satisfaction and it feels like the right moment to let it move on to someone else who will appreciate it," she said.
There's something fitting about that perspective. She didn't set out to build the complete set as an investment or a trophy. It grew organically from genuine appreciation for the whisky. And once the mission she hadn't originally planned became complete, she could step back satisfied.
The asking price reflects both the rarity and the condition. At nearly $150,000, it's not an impulse purchase. But for serious collectors or investors who understand the scotch whisky market, it represents something that may genuinely be one of a kind.
What Makes Anniversary Malts Important
Understanding why this collection matters requires understanding what The Macallan Anniversary Malts represented when they launched. In 1983, single malt scotch whisky wasn't the established premium category it is today. Most people who drank whisky were drinking blends. Single malts were still finding their footing in the market.
For a distillery to commit to releasing a series of 25-year-old, vintage-dated single malts showed remarkable confidence. It also showed patience. You can't decide to make 25-year-old whisky and have it ready next month. The distillery had to have started aging that spirit a quarter-century earlier, long before they could know whether the market would embrace it.
The series helped establish what premium aged scotch could be. It demonstrated that single malt whisky could command serious attention and serious prices. It showed that vintage dating and age statements mattered to consumers.
Looking back now, Littler's comment about the series changing the trajectory of premium scotch whisky doesn't seem like hyperbole. The Anniversary Malts came at a pivotal moment and helped shape the direction the industry would take.
The Current Market
The whisky collecting and investing market has exploded over the past two decades. Bottles that once sold for modest prices now command tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands at auction. The Macallan, in particular, has become one of the most sought-after distilleries among collectors.
Record-breaking auction prices for rare Macallans have made headlines repeatedly. The distillery's reputation for quality and consistency, combined with clever marketing and genuine scarcity of older bottlings, has created intense demand.
Within that already heated market, The Macallan Anniversary Malts occupy a special position. They're historically significant. They're genuinely rare. And as Smeyers' collection demonstrates, finding them in excellent condition becomes harder every year.
The $149,016 asking price for the complete set might seem steep to someone unfamiliar with the whisky market. But divided across 19 bottles, it works out to roughly $7,843 per bottle. For vintage Macallan in exceptional condition with original packaging, that's actually defensible pricing given current market conditions.
Whether the collection will sell at the asking price remains to be seen. But the rarity argument Littler makes is sound. If this truly is the only known complete set in existence, and if recreating it is genuinely impossible or impractical, then the value proposition becomes clearer.
What Happens Next
The collection is currently listed through Mark Littler Ltd on behalf of Smeyers. Whoever eventually purchases it will face an interesting decision: keep it intact as a complete set, or break it up and sell individual bottles.
Keeping it together preserves the historical significance and the achievement Smeyers accomplished over twenty-plus years. Breaking it up might maximize financial return, since selling to multiple buyers could potentially generate more revenue than selling to one.
Most serious collectors would likely keep the set intact. The completeness is what makes it special. Individual Anniversary Malt bottles, while valuable, aren't quite as rare as having all of them together in museum-quality condition.
For Smeyers, the outcome probably matters less than knowing she completed what she set out to do, even if she didn't originally set out to do it. She fell in love with Macallan, started collecting Anniversary Malts, and ended up with something nobody else has managed to assemble.
That's a pretty good run for something that started with just one bottle and a trip to Scotland in the late 1990s.
The whisky inside those bottles was distilled decades ago by people who couldn't have known how the market would evolve. Smeyers spent decades collecting them without knowing she'd end up with the complete set. And now someone else will have the chance to own a piece of scotch whisky history that might truly be irreplaceable.
Whether it sells quickly or takes time to find the right buyer, the collection represents something beyond just expensive bottles. It's a snapshot of what passion and patience can accomplish when someone cares enough to do something properly, even if they didn't plan it from the start.
