[Ccass]

Originally Posted by yahooskidoo

Recently aquired these old bottles of Jack Daniels from an older gentleman who said he was a liquor sales rep back in the day. He said one is unopened and the other his teen son opened and tried some then severely punished, what can you tell me about them.

These are commemorative bottles that were made from around 1971 to 1998 by Jack Daniels. They made a couple different bottle designs each year throughout those years. It's basically the same exact whiskey that is in the traditional #7 bottles but they bottled a lot of those at a slightly higher proof of 90. Your first one is the Lincoln decanter from 1979 and the 2nd one appears to be the 'tribute to Tennessee' bottle from 1982.

A little interesting info about this period of time for whiskey distillers: Brown liquor (whiskey) became incredibly unpopular in the mid seventies and brands like Jim Beam and Jack Daniels started to have an incredible abundance of aged whiskey with not buyers. So they ingeniously came up with the idea of bottling their whiskey in decanters and sell them as limited edition gift ideas. The idea worked fantastically! Thousands and thousands of decanter whiskey got sold and it helped these distilleries through some very rough times. Empty bottles sell on ebay for $25-$50. It's not legal to sell bottles with the whiskey in them but there are special FB pages that get around that in local some local areas. An unopened full bottle is probably worth $60-$100 to the right collector.