Single Malt Scotch Fire-water sale: For a taste of your whiskey...the kids aren't going to college

For small-ticket items like umbrellas, polyester money-belts emptied of cash or novelty hats, bargain hunters and holiday-shopping cheapskates can save a few shekels when shopping for those who have nothing by hitting their local public transit auction.

If you’d like to get your greasy mitts on bigger-ticket items with the serial numbers filed off, you can always hit a police auction and take your pick of the repository of stuff confiscated from local riffraff—a station wagon with the tires shot out, an outboard used for immigration excursions into the Florida panhandle— before your friendly neighborhood beat cop has a chance to sell it back to them.

For bona fide high rollers who would like to squander their riches on things like a a thong that once flossed the arse of Demi Moore or a bottle of Elvis' halitosis breath, there are auction houses like Sothebey’s and Christie’s where there’s also a lucrative market for those heirlooms that mysteriously came into your family’s possession after the war.

At an auction held by Christie's in New York State recently, the paddles were flapping faster than a round of amphetamine-fueled table tennis when a bottle of 81-year-old Macallan Scotch sold for $54,000, the highest price the fire water has ever fetched at the auction house.

The whiskey was distilled in 1926 in Scotland and bottled in 1986 before being purchased by a private investor. An expensive wine of that vintage that had been exposed to air would most likely prove useful only to wilt flowers and ward off bats in an enclosed space, but, fortunately for the purchaser of the rare bottle of hooch at Christie's, whiskey suffers from no such limitations.

"You can open it up, have some, close [it] and enjoy it again at your leisure. It's not going to spoil," according ot the head of wine and spirit sales for Christie's America.