What Is My Perfume Worth? Sold Prices vs Asking Prices

What Is My Perfume Worth? Sold Prices vs Asking Prices

Almost every perfume valuation you will read online is built from asking prices. That is the single biggest reason they are wrong. This article explains what actually determines a second-hand value, how to read a price range instead of a single number, and where our own figures come from.

Asking prices are not prices

A listing is what a seller hopes to receive. A sale is what a buyer actually paid. The two diverge most in exactly the categories people care about — discontinued, vintage and gift-set bottles, where supply is thin and sellers anchor on each other's optimistic listings.

Unsold stock is invisible in the numbers. A bottle listed at US$400 for two years contributes nothing to a price index except noise, yet it is the number most buyers see first.

What actually moves the number

• Concentration and volume. An extrait is not comparable to an eau de toilette, and a 30 ml bottle does not sell at a third of the 100 ml price. Compare like with like.
• Fill level. Sealed, full, 80% remaining, half — each step down is a step in price, and the drop is not linear.
• Batch year. For scents with a documented reformulation, an older batch can command a premium. For everything else, age only matters through condition.
• Packaging. Box, inserts, cellophane and the original cap all matter to collectors, sometimes more than the juice.
• Supply that is actually for sale. Ten people asking US$300 with no sales is a different market from one bottle selling at US$180.

Read a range, not a number

A single median hides the thing you need to know: how much the price varies. We publish the interquartile range — the middle half of sales — alongside the median, because that spread tells you whether condition and batch are doing the work.

In our own records, Dior Poison (1985) has a median of US$101 across 144 recorded sales, with the middle half of those sales falling between US$77 and US$151.75. That is not a pricing error; it is the real spread between a full boxed bottle and a tired one. If your bottle sits at the top of the range, you need a reason — sealed, boxed, early batch.

Why sample size is the first thing to check

A median of three sales is an anecdote with a decimal point. We do not publish a figure below three recorded sales, and we print the sample size next to every entry so you can weigh it yourself. A fragrance with 100 sales supports a confident range; one with four does not.

A practical order of checks

1. Identify the exact variant — concentration, size, packaging era. Most bad valuations start with the wrong bottle.
2. Find completed sales, not listings.
3. Adjust for condition — fill level, box, cap, label.
4. Look at current supply — how many are for sale right now, and at what.
5. Set a range, then a price. If you are selling, price at the top of the range only when you can justify it.

Where our numbers come from

Every figure in our sold-price index comes from our own completed orders for that exact fragrance — asking prices are excluded. Each entry states its sample size and the period covered, and the methodology explains the calculation in full. Where we do not yet have enough sales, we say so rather than estimate.