Short and long term puerh Investment is a big thing in Guangdong tea market with many the cavalier speculator rolling the dice on a case of whatever the trending Dayi special release cake of the moment is or might be tomorrow. There is a fully functioning online puerh stock market covering older factory cakes by the case. Sometimes when you go into a wholesale tea shop here and ask the price of said tea the owner will refer to this source to give you the price. It fluctuates constantly. Generally speaking buying any raw puerh will offer a base line of return, probably 12% rise per annum. 1 brand of tea cake in particular offering higher than average returns, can you guess which? Of course it’s Dayi ‘Menghai Tea Factory’! Yes, Dayi is of course the serious choice of speculation with the 7542 recipe being the ‘must have’ for any Pu Erh portfolio. why? It’s a solid investment that will rise in line with most other investments for the early years but it shines at the 10 year stage, in fact all Dayi cakes will jump around 25-30% in value at 10 years of age. This is a fairly standard occurrence. It also means that your very unlikely to find any 8-9 year old Dayi cases for sale, why would they sell to you when pay day is just around the corner? After the 10 year stretch things will generally carry in well with the potential of further growth depending on market forces and opinion of said recipe for that year. Things get a little more risky with the more exclusive releases from Dayi with fortunes being won and lost weekly! How brave do you dare to be??!!
To get involved in this racey action as a westerner is a tricky business for several reasons. you would really need to have a man on the ground in Guangdong tea market, someone you can trust to store your tea. Tea is a cumbersome commodity, if you were to have your case shipped over from China to you and back again at point of sale you would be taking a real dent on your return on investment. Also storage would be a real issue in terms of resale. Any prospective buyer of your aged tea would be very reluctant to buy a tea that hasn’t been aged on China motherland! I mean, you would probably find a buyer, it’s just quite odd for them and could hinder the chances of sale and or the price you’ll get. you could opt (if you had the option) to have your precious tea stored at a climate controlled wear house. This is probably the best place to store your tea, the wear house will have a regulated RH , temperature and good airflow which means tour tea will be in no danger of perishing. They may have minimum case quantities in order to be utilised, this is something I must look into! Ultimately investing in a commodity that sits abroad in a country on the other side of the world, there’s a trust element there.
If this were to be possible there would be serious money to be made, realistic returns of in a 6 year period of 120% – brokerage and wear house fees. Not bad at all!
Thanks for reading guys, let me know your thoughts and of course…happy cupping!