To some extent all pu’erh moves together in the market. When the pu’erh bust hit in 2007, teas across the board were hit. Raw tea, ripe tea, Dayi, Changtai, Lao Banzhang, Yiwu.. Of course this is only part of the picture. In the bust’s case, not everything was hit equally and teas definitely didn’t all recover at the same rate.. Some teas rebounded in a year or two, far more quickly than others. Others slowly creeped back up in five or six years and some teas and brands have never recovered. (more…)

When I investigated the teas that western vendors tend to sell (tldr: young raw pu’erh), the topic of pu’erhs value over time was brought up. In that post, I found that the average cost of a young raw pu’erh listed on western vendor’s sites tended to be less expensive than the semi-aged (7-15yrs+) or ripe teas that were listed. You shouldn’t read too much into this as it’s an imperfect comparison. The most obvious flaw is that the source material isn’t the same. There’s no quantitative way to measure the quality of the leaf, which makes the question of value over time tricky to answer. This article kicks off a series of posts looking at the pu’erh market. (more…)