Johnnie Walker Auction Collection

Frans Op den Kamp bought a single $130 bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label in New York in 1999, and over the next two decades built it into a 3,200-piece archive now heading to auction as The Johnnie Walker Collection: One Hundred Years of Striding. Op den Kamp has become the person other collectors call to date, value, or authenticate a bottle based on his extensive experience with the brand. His personal collection runs deep: more than 1,600 full-size bottles, 600 miniatures, and over 1,000 pieces of advertising and memorabilia, including more than 100 pre-1968 corked Black, Red, and Swing bottlings and rare single malts from Cardhu, Talisker, and Mortlach that still name-check John Walker on their original labels. Two lots were never available to buy at any price: the 1805 Celebration Blend, limited to 200 bottles gifted for the 200th anniversary of John Walker's birth, and a 25-bottle Signature Blend by F1 champion Jenson Button, offered only by private invitation in Shanghai. The advertising archive alone traces the brand's Striding Man logo back to its 1908 debut.