By Scott Reyburn

Aug. 25 (Bloomberg) — The largest single-owner collection of whisky to appear at auction is to be sold in Scotland, Bonhams said today.

The auction house will offer, at its Nov. 18 Edinburgh sale, more than 3,000 bottles amassed by Willard Folsom, a former United Airlines employee who died in June 2008, aged 64.

Scotch whisky is one of the few parts of the international auction market that has enjoyed high selling rates and price rises in 2009.

“I’ve seen so many new buyers in the last few months,” Martin Green, Bonhams’s specialist in charge of the Folsom sale, said in an interview. “Whisky is seen as a safe bet. Unlike wine, there are no bad vintages and it won’t change as much over time.”

Ninety-seven percent of the lots sold at Bonhams’s Aug. 19 whisky auction in Edinburgh. Rival Scottish auction house McTear’s of Glasgow set a record for a single bottle of whisky on Aug. 5 when 11,750 pounds ($19,300) was paid by a California- based collector for a 50-year-old malt from the Macallan distillery.

Clients from Asia now provide a significant proportion of buyers at auctions. Up to 30 percent of the lots at Bonhams’s August whisky sale were bought by Asian bidders, Green said.

“Most collectors won’t touch their purchases,” said Green. Folsom was unusual in that he enjoyed drinking whisky as well as collecting it, he said.

‘Half Full’

“Some say the glass is half empty, others say it’s half full; I say, pour the water out and put some Scotch in that glass,” was Folsom’s often-quoted philosophy of life, said Bonhams.

The San Francisco collector developed his passion for malt whisky in 1988. During his retirement, he frequently toured Scotland to source prime examples from the distillers. Brands included in the sale will be Laphroaig, Glenfiddich, Glenmorangie, Springbank, the Glenlivet and the Macallan.

The collection, which features whiskies from producers ranging from the Orkney Islands to the Scottish Lowlands, is more impressive for its breadth, rather than individual rarities, said Green

“It’s unlikely that any single bottles will be worth more than 4,000 pounds,” Green said.

(Scott Reyburn writes about the art market for Bloomberg News. Opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer on the story: Scott Reyburn in London at sreyburn@hotmail.com.

(WI has some doubts that this is the largest single owner collection in the world)