Origins and Early Format
The Best of Panama (BoP) competition was established in 1996 by the Specialty Coffee Association of Panama (SCAP) to promote the country’s nascent specialty industry. For its first several years it operated as a conventional cupping competition, identifying quality lots and helping Panamanian producers access higher-value export channels. Entry is open to farms across Panama’s growing regions, primarily Boquete in the Chiriquí Highlands, where altitude and volcanic soil create conditions for exceptional Arabica development.
The competition divides entries into categories by variety and processing method—Geisha washed, Geisha natural, and a combined “Best Other Varieties” category. Each lot is cupped blind by an international panel of judges, with the highest-scoring samples advancing to an online auction. The auction format allows buyers from any country to bid in real time, which was an early experiment in what is now common across the specialty sector.
The 2004 Geisha Moment
The trajectory of Best of Panama changed permanently in 2004 when Hacienda La Esmeralda, owned by the Peterson family, submitted a coffee grown from Geisha seeds originally sourced from Ethiopia via the CATIE research station in Costa Rica. The lot scored dramatically above competitors and sold at auction for $21 per pound—a number that shocked an industry accustomed to commodity prices below $1.50 per pound for conventional lots.
By 2006, the same farm’s Geisha had climbed to $50.25 per pound. These prices weren’t simply a novelty; they demonstrated that a single farm, processing with precision, could produce a coffee distinctive enough to warrant pricing an order of magnitude above the C-market. The 2004 competition is now cited as the event that introduced Geisha to the international specialty community and sparked a planting wave across Panama, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Ethiopia.
Price Records and Escalation
The auction record trajectory since 2004 reflects both genuine quality recognition and speculative buying from high-end retailers in Asia, particularly South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, which now drive the upper end of BoP bidding. Key milestones include: $601 per pound for an Esmeralda lot in 2017; $803 per pound for Elida Estate’s natural Geisha in 2018; $1,029 per pound in 2019 for another Elida lot, breaking the $1,000 threshold for the first time.
In September 2024, a honey-processed Elida Aguacatillo Gesha sold for $13,518 per kilogram, with South Korea’s Cupping Post purchasing the entire 3 kg lot for $40,554. By August 2025, the record had moved again: Hacienda La Esmeralda’s washed Geisha sold for $30,204 per kilogram at the BoP online auction. These prices represent a 1,400-fold increase from the C-market price of the same year and function less as transaction benchmarks than as marketing events for farms whose total auction volumes run to a few dozen kilograms.
Why BoP Matters for the Global Specialty Market
Best of Panama functions as a proof-of-concept for the broader auction model that has been replicated by Cup of Excellence across dozens of countries, and by private auctions in Ethiopia, Kenya, Colombia, and elsewhere. It established that transparent, cupping-verified quality could command prices disconnected from commodity markets—and that consumers and trade buyers would pay them.
The competition also accelerated variety diversification. Panama farms responding to Geisha’s success have experimented with other Ethiopian heirloom varieties, and BoP now includes categories recognizing them. The data BoP produces—lot scores, prices paid, buyer origin—has become a reference point for the global specialty conversation about what premium coffee is worth and who ultimately benefits from price records.
Criticisms and Structural Concerns
High BoP prices generate criticism as well as celebration. The records are set by lots of two to five kilograms sold to a single buyer, meaning price-per-kilogram figures do not translate to income for the broader Panamanian farming community. Most farms in Chiriquí sell the majority of their production through conventional export channels at prices far below auction outliers.
There are also concerns about the speculative character of recent bidding. Analysts have noted that some lots approach prices where the coffee itself becomes a financial instrument or promotional vehicle rather than a beverage product. The Specialty Coffee Association and trade press have debated whether record prices serve producers, the market, or primarily the image of the buyers who announce them.