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There’s money in those old bottles lurking in your liquor cabinet

No, not those bottles in the front. But some of the stuff lurking at the back could be candidates for a secondhand liquor store if we had one like they do in Tokyo.
(S. Irene Virbila / Los Angeles Times)
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Is there anything more useless than those old bottles of liquor in your cabinet -- that god-awful bottle of sweet wine, or that bottle of rye someone gave you but you’ll never drink? In Tokyo, you don’t have to worry about regifting them. You just sell them to a new secondhand store called Liquor Off, reports Brian Ashcraft on the website Kotaku East.

We’re not talking half-empty liquor bottles, but full, unopened bottles either bought by mistake, left over from parties or received as clueless gifts. Liquor Off buys them from private individuals and then sells the liquor at a discount.

The shop will even buy those teensie bottles you get in business or first class on airplanes. And beer too -- cans of beer! Its website (in Japanese) lists sake, Belgian ale and some fancy Champagne as well.

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Just think of the possibilities if we had such a shop in L.A.

Take a good look at your liquor cabinet: You might have a good dozen of such bottles that are just sitting there. To make room for the good stuff, you might want to cull that selection -- and with the money you’d get from Liquor Off, you could buy a few bottles of something you’d look forward to drinking.

Anybody want to do a startup?

Follow @sirenevirbila for more on food and wine

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