I don’t buy as much tea as I did in my peak years.. But last year bought a few cakes of 2008 Dayi 8582 off of taobao. I also had a local tea friend traveling home to Malaysia buy a few cakes of 2008 7542 when he was there. In the case of the 8582, I’ve always liked the recipe and the tea meets a lot of my drinking criteria. And 7542 is classic.. But why now? As those that follow pu’erh know, Dayi prices have been falling. The past couple years have been a particularly good opportunity to buy good enough factory tea for a reasonable price. A significant added bonus for those of us in drier climates is that 2005-2009 tea are now over 15 years old. The 8582 was a little over $50 and while of course there’s forwarder fees, even when included the price is still less than $60.

Note: There’s also inflation to consider, which would make the pricing of tea today even more favorable if it’s around the same $$ as 2020 or before.

15 Year Old Factory Tea Recipes Used to be Expensive

When the first episode of TeaDB was released (2013), 15+ year old well-known factory tea was hard to find and very expensive if you could. That would be teas like the 1997 Menghai TF Water Mark and 1998 Xiaguan 8653 Cakes or Tuochas. Today in 2025, it’s easy to find and not that expensive. Even before Dayi recently dropped in price, it was still far less. Obviously the fanciest productions of the year are not cheap, but well known benchmark recipes like the 7542 and 8582 are attainable. Compared with Dayi, other factories are usually even more inexpensive.

In the US there are a decent amount of teas to choose from, even amongst just the two big factories. This is due to a few factors. Most significantly – production ramped up significantly during the 1990s and into the 2000s, leading to increasing abundance of pu’erh. Along with the higher quantity came complaints that the quality of material and/or processing doesn’t live up to the 1990s or earlier standards (also true).

Still.. Even with lower quality material, I think these teas are worthwhile and do fit into my own tea diet assuming they are properly aged.

Where to Buy Factory Tea?

Here’s how I breakdown the buying options.

Big Online Store that sells all sorts of tea and is Western Facing.

The two most obvious of these are:

1. King Tea Mall
2. Yunnan Sourcing

Pros:

• Reliable.  I’d strongly recommend you buy from these over a random local shop or Amazon. While there’s occasionally a complaint of a bad sale, these are prolific sellers with a mostly satisfied customer base. You get what you buy and storage is usually accurately described. If you bought from a smaller retailer or a local shop, the cake vetting and storage may or may not be on point.
• Markup isn’t extreme.
• Sampling might be possible. A big advantage if you just want to try.
• Simple. Will ship straight to you.

Cons:

• Selection is limited to what they have in stock. If you’re just looking to try a few different teas, they should be good enough but if you’re looking for something specific you may or may not find it here. King Tea Mall (basically a taobao-reseller) probably has the widest selection of any western facing store.
• Price is not the cheapest possible. These are marked up more than if you had full access to the Chinese or Taiwanese market.

I do this option from time to time, particularly for ripe. It’s often not worth it to spend that much time optimizing for the lowest price on a $20 ripe cake. The convenience of buying from Yunnan Sourcing US here outweighs the slightly higher price for me.

A related option – you can also buy Dayi from a  curator like Teas We Like or The Jade Leaf or more recently Quiche Teas. The pros and cons are fairly obvious, the main negative being selection and sampling are limited. One major pro if you trust the curator is that they’ll have potentially tested the specific batch and storage and removed some of the risk.

Taobao / Dayi Authorized Taobao or TMall Store

This is what I did in purchasing the 2008 8582, I bought from an office Dayi Retailer.

Pros:

• Price. Good way to get tea fairly directly. With prices having fallen slowly, these are often the best place to get the best deal. Even comparing the 2008 8582 cake price with King Tea Mall, there’s a large difference in the pricing.
• Reliable. These are big stores and if you order from an authorized store they should be perfectly fine.
• Ordering from Taobao and using a shipping agent is easier than it’s been in the past.

Cons:

• Samples are almost never offered.
• You’ll need to use google translate as these storefronts are not intended for a foreign audience.
• Shipping agent. To get the tea, you’d first order on Taobao and have the tea shipped to a 3rd party agent who will then ship it internationally to you. I’ve used a few agents, the latest being shipforwarder. I’ve also been satisfied with Super Buy. Alternatively you can have the agent order for you, but you may miss out on vendor discounts and specials that are offered directly from the vendor. i.e. Tong discounts. In the end this option is still likely significantly cheaper than KTM or YS.

Other Taobao Vendors & Non-Dayi Factories

Seven or eight years ago you could find Dayi tea from a lot of different vendors including unauthorized dealers. At some point they tightened the screws and Dayi tea became a bit harder to get outside of the authorized retailers. Xiaguan never did this, so you can still use taobao search function to find Xiaguan fairly easily. I’ve ordered from MX Tea for 8 or 9 years now, and they’ve always been fine with reliably decent storage.

To order from other taobao vendors you’d follow the same protocol as a Dayi authorized taobao.

Taiwanese Vendors (or Auctions)

One of the bigger changes in the last 7 or 8 years is the amount of people buying from Taiwanese-based pu’erh vendors. I’m sure from the vendor’s perspective it’s an insignificant number, but for a small niche community it feels like there’s more commerce directly from vendors who aren’t specifically trying to sell to the west.

The popular shipping agent here is EZStar, who primarily uses facebook to communicate. This works the same way as a Taobao agent. You can use them to send money to the tea vendor and as a ship forwarder. Occasionally vendors will be able to ship direct to the US, but you may need to wire money, which is something an agent can also help with.

Taiwanese auctions are exactly what it sounds like. An auction for pu’erh cakes. It takes place on facebook. Some cheap, some expensive. My advice: try to get some idea what you’re doing and setup the agent before bothering vendors. Talk to people who have used auctions before. Don’t bid on something cluelessly and try to figure it out later.

Is The Price Good? Using Donghe For Reference

Finally, how do you determine if the price you’re about to pay is good. Donghe is a good reference point for Dayi tea. It’s important to note that Donghe is a wholesaler and you can’t reasonably expect a vendor selling a cake or even a tong to match the price. What Donghe is good for is to get a quick look at if the price is reasonable or not. For instance, if Donghe is telling you that a jian costs 10,000RMB you can translate that to a cake price of around $33 (divide by 42 cakes). If you are about to buy it for $250, you’ll know you might be able to find a better price elsewhere.

Donghe is also based in mainland China. The Taiwanese market may be a bit slower to react to pricing changes on the mainland.