Friday, January 31, 2020

Hitting FAST with a Hammer


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:

  1. 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.

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    1. 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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