Flex Mentallo

'Yellow wine' from 1774 to be sold at auction Tipple dating back to Louis XVI's reign set to fetch £17,500 a bottle Two bottles, of three vintage bottles of vin jaune "yellow wine" from 1774 ( REUTERS ) Wine connoisseurs will be able to buy a truly vintage tipple when three bottles of "yellow wine" dating back to 1774 go up for auction in France on Saturday. The bottles of Arbois Vin Jaune are among the oldest in the world. They were made with grapes harvested when Louis XVI sat on the country’s throne. Now they have been estimated to be worth up to €20,000 – £17,500 – each according to the auction house, Jura Encheres in Lons-le-Saunier, which will sell them. One of three bottles of vin jaune "yellow wine" from 1774, is presented (Reuters) "Having three bottles from this particular year and of such quality is exceptional," said lead auctioneer Philippe Etievant, according to the Economic Times. The bottles were produced in the Jura region by 18th century winemaker Anatoile Vercel and have been kept by his descendants ever since. It gets its distinct colour from the grape being harvested later in the year and then being matured under a film of yeast. A panel of two dozen experts tasted a sample of the same 1774 batch in 1994 and scored it 9.4 out of 10. They praised it for its notes of “walnuts, spices, curry, cinnamon.” Yet the potential price tag remains some way off the world’s most expensive ever wine. Bottles of 1907 Heidsieck champagne sold for $275,000 - £206,000 - in 1998 after they were salvaged from the bottom of the sea. The Swedish freighter carrying a crate of the stock had been sunk off the coast of Finland during World War One giving the drink historic – as well as vintage – value.

I took a break from collecting that may well be permanent given the surge in values in recent times and wondered if fellow boardies know of examples of this phenomenon occurring in other fields of collecting? I was prompted by the following: Bottle of 1945 Burgundy sells for £424,000 to become world’s most expensive wine A bottle of 1945 French wine has been sold for a record-breaking £424,000 at auction. The Romanee-Conti – widely considered the planet’s finest Burgundy – was bought for 17 times its estimated worth at Sotheby’s in New York on Saturday. It smashed the world’s previous high-mark for a standard bottle: a 1869 Chateau Lafite Rothschild which sold for a comparatively inexpensive £177,000 in Hong Kong in 2010. A few minutes after Saturday's sale, another 1945 Romanee-Conti went for £377,000. The wine’s vineyard may help explain its worth. It spans just four acres in the Cote de Nuits region, with no more than 6,000 bottles produced each year. The 1945 bottle was one of only 600 produced, just before the vines were pulled up for replanting with no more wine made until 1952. Saturday's lots came from the personal collection of Robert Drouhin, who directed the prominent wine producer Maison Joseph Drouhin from 1957 to 2003. Elsewhere at the auction, a bottle of 60-year-old 1926 whisky fetched £641,000, failing to break the current £910,000 record for Scotch.

Underwhelmingly awesome just about sums it up for me too. #13 and #14 hit the mark, but they are far too rich for my blood.

Not everything he had came fresh from the drugstore, especially some later books such as St John romance. Conversely, no matter how fresh and vivid the Church Planet run, going by these scans, only a relatively small number have saturated colors, and then its mostly on issues that are by and large 'color fast'. All I can say, is, thank goodness for small mercies. Or in this case, extremely large ones.

I'm intrigued because the latter part of the run is largely missing from what has been shown so far.

Does anyone happen to know if the Church collection included a full run of Planets? Am I right in thinking there was no #15?

Ditto - it was the photojournals that changed the game.

Time on my hands

Is that a prime number?

Eleventy three

Darn, you've blown the gaff!