Most readers will be familiar with MarshalN’s famous post
Hitting Hard with A Hammer. In this
post, MarshalN recommends the buying strategy of buying very large qualities of
puerh that you enjoy:
A more experienced tea
friend in those days told me that whenever she was buying stuff, she liked to
“hit hard with the hammer,” meaning buying lots of the tea. Otherwise, you run
the risk of not having enough of it when you want it.
I think better advice these days is to “hit fast
with the hammer”, meaning buying a tea that you know you like and that you know
is a good value quickly (or at least in a timely manner) without much hesitation. Otherwise, you run the risk of
it selling out before you purchase or before the tea doubles or triples in
price.
I am a firm believer of the strategy of hitting it hard as
well- this is how I have restocked my puerh.
I actually employ two modes of hitting hard. The first is to buy anywhere from 1.5-2
tongs, truly hitting it hard. The other
is to hit it ½ as hard and pick up a few cakes or 1/2 tong. I hit it ½ as hard when the cake is quite
expensive and/or if I am not 100% sure of my purchase and I want to sample it
for a while to make a final decision.
Sometimes it’s more prudent to hit it half as hard. However, if the tea is
cheap and good value and you love it, then hitting it truly hard is usually the
best strategy. While I was preparing an
upcoming post on purchasing goals, I realized that all of the puerh I truly hit
hard with a hammer either tripled in price within a few years (here and here)
or have since completely sold out (here and here). This had me thinking that, contrary to previous advice, you really should
not wait too long- hit hard and hit fast.
In many ways hitting fast is even more relevant these days
than hitting hard. This is mainly due to
how expensive puerh is and the dwindling purchasing power of potentially future
puerh buyers. People are becoming less
likely to hit as hard as you could in 2013 when MarshalN’s original post was published. Nowadays many people’s purchasing power is
less than it was, say, 10 years ago. But
if you enjoy a tea, even hitting fast can land you with a full 357g cake of
your favorite sample or even maybe just a Xiao bing or maybe even just a sample
before it triples in price or sells out.
And trust me, if it’s good puerh and is undervalued it will either sell
out or significantly go up in price- my own experience above is evidence. This is especially true for the best of the cheapest. Of course, you really have to have some
experience under your belt and know your own tastes before you understand value in puerh. Not having a firm grip on this is really where the risk of hitting hard lies.
It is also fitting that hitting fast with the hammer even
applies to the experiential puerh drinker who will never ever hit it hard with
a hammer. It allows them to potentially
have the same puerh experience at 1/3 the price or something that may become
more limited and exclusive thereby enhancing their experience with a sample.
Hitting hard is fine and good, but these days you had better
hit it fast with a hammer as well.
Peace
2 comments:
I think it is very important to note that one's taste in puerh is likely to change pretty dramatically over the course of the first few years as compared to how it would change later on. I think your advice is solid but for someone who is still in the first five years of drinking puerh I would strongly urge them not to buy more than two cakes of anything. Instead, focus on sampling a wide variety of stuff until your tastes solidify. Unless of course you are made of money. In that case buy tongs of the expensive stuff and send me some because I always believed in you :)
Early on in my drinking I found a maocha that I really loved so I bought out the rest of the vendor's stock. Now my tastes have changed and I never drink it. Hopefully I can use it in some tea swaps.
ShadAdams,
Very good point thank you for stressing that. It took me years of puerh drinking before I even bought my first cake.
Peace
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