Fifteen kilograms of coffee. That is about what fits in a carry-on bag with room for your shoes. On September 24, 2026, that lot sold at the Best of Panama auction for US$270,060. That is US$18,004 per kilogram (Newsroom Panama; Casa Solution). The coffee is the Elida Geisha Torre, from the Lamastus family's Elida estate in Boquete, grown at roughly 1,700 to 1,950 meters (Casa Solution).
Your first thought is probably: so I should buy a farm in the Panamanian mountains. Hold that thought. The numbers are better than the story you are about to tell yourself, and they say something more useful.
The auction in numbers
- 50 lots (40 Geisha, 10 other varietals), 750 kg in total, 24,544 bids.
- US$3,041,940 in total sales. The weighted average was US$4,055.92 per kg.
- The top three lots together brought in US$622,995, about 20.5% of the whole auction.
Do the division and you get something the headlines skip: the star lot sold for about 4.4 times the auction's average price per kilo (Proper calculation from the figures above). The average is still about US$1,840 per pound by our conversion. Ordinary coffee does not sell like that. Neither does the typical Geisha lot.
And it wasn't even the record
Last year's record was US$30,204 per kilogram for a 20 kg lot from Hacienda La Esmeralda, also in Boquete, which came to US$604,080 (Global Coffee Report). So the 2026 star lot sold for roughly 40% less per kilo than 2025's. The auction as a whole still grew, from just over US$2.8 million in 2025 to US$3.04 million this year.
Read that again, because it is the whole lesson. The headline price fell. The total rose. A record is one lot on one day. The average is what a farm actually lives on.
| Best of Panama | US$ per kg | Lot / note |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 record lot | 30,204 | 20 kg, US$604,080, Hacienda La Esmeralda |
| 2026 top lot | 18,004 | 15 kg, US$270,060, Elida Geisha Torre |
| 2026 weighted average | 4,055.92 | 50 lots, 750 kg, US$3,041,940 |
Sources: Newsroom Panama (Sept 24, 2026); Casa Solution; Global Coffee Report (2025 record). The per-kilo ratio and the per-pound conversion are Proper's arithmetic. Reports differ on who bought the 2026 top lot, so we left the buyer out.
So, is a mountain farm a good investment?
This article cannot tell you, and anyone who says the auction can is selling something. Here is what the auction does and does not show:
- It shows that the highlands around Boquete produce coffee that buyers in several countries will bid for, year after year. The Lamastus estate has operated since 1918 (Casa Solution). That is a century of know-how, not a purchase order.
- It doesn't show what a hectare earns, what land costs, what a normal harvest sells for, or how many lots out of the 50 sit anywhere near the top. We don't have verified figures for those, so we won't quote any.
If someone pitches you a Boquete farm and opens with "$270,060," ask one question: what was the average price per kilo across all the lots, and where does my farm's coffee fit in that range? If they can't answer, you have learned something cheap.
Where this goes next
The mountains are one of the three places people ask us about when they say they want to invest in Panama without moving here. The others are the beach and the city. We are working through all three with the same rule: the number comes from a source we can name, the story comes second. If you are weighing one of them, that is the conversation the Clarity Session is for.
