From 240,000 Won to 500 Million: The Incredible Twist of an Investment Rarer Than Winning the Lottery

British Man in His 80s Finds Forgotten Whiskey Investment After Decades
Bought for 130 Pounds 54 Years Ago, Lost Track After Vendor Bankruptcy
Now a 500 Million Won Jackpot
“Will Use It for Children and Grandchildren”

A man in his 80s from the UK has discovered a forgotten cask of whiskey after more than half a century, which is now up for sale with a price tag of 500 million won.

A cask (wooden barrel for storing whiskey) containing Glenrothes Single Malt Whiskey invested in 1971 by Angus Kerr (81). Official website of intermediary Mark Littler

According to the BBC on August 30 (local time), Angus Kerr (81), who lives in Surrey, England, purchased a cask (a wooden barrel used for storing whiskey) filled with Glenrothes single malt whiskey in 1971 for 130 pounds (currently equivalent to around 240,000 won). Kerr, who was working in commodity trading, decided to make the investment after hearing that there was a company selling newly distilled whiskey by the cask.

At the time, Kerr had just lost more than 1,000 pounds due to the bankruptcy of manufacturing company Rolls-Royce. He said, "I thought even if I lost the money at the time, I could handle it, so I decided to invest," adding, "even if things went wrong, I thought at least I could swim inside the barrel."

The plan was to resell the cask for a profit after five years. However, the company that sold it went bankrupt, making it impossible to track where the cask had ended up. Kerr thought he had lost everything again and went on with his life, forgetting about the investment altogether.

It wasn't until several decades later that the cask resurfaced. The company storing the cask contacted Kerr for storage fees, and so he enlisted intermediary Mark Littler to handle the sale. The cask contained about 287 bottles' worth of whiskey. While Kerr worried that the whiskey might have spoiled after such a long aging process, it turned out to be in excellent condition. Experts who sampled it described the taste and quality as "fantastic."

This is a rare occurrence. Littler, the intermediary, explained, "A cask that's been aged for 57 years usually drops below 40% ABV and can no longer be sold as Scotch whiskey, or the oak overwhelms the flavor." Kerr's cask avoided these pitfalls, maintaining an ABV of 42.2%.

The oldest product Glenrothes distillery has released to date is a 51-year-old whiskey, limited to 100 bottles in March last year, sold at 37,000 pounds per bottle (approximately 69 million won). Kerr's cask is six years older, and according to the whiskey database 'Whiskybase', there is no record of a Glenrothes whiskey surpassing 52 years.

The estimated sale price has been set at 270,000 pounds (about 500 million won), meaning the investment has grown by roughly 2,000 times. Even after factoring in inflation, 130 pounds would equal about 2,400 pounds today (approximately 4.45 million won), which still represents a return of over 100 times the original investment. Littler remarked, "You're more likely to win the lottery," adding, "I've never seen a case where a cask bought without documents from a bankrupt company sat forgotten in a warehouse and became the oldest on the market."

Ironically, Kerr himself does not drink Scotch, and even if he does, he chooses bottles that cost no more than 18 pounds (about 34,000 won). He said he plans to use the proceeds from the sale for his eight children and grandchildren, joking, "I need to find someone like Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, or Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, for whom 270,000 pounds is just pocket change."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.