I think i brought a fake (Puer Nooby)

> doesn’t have a seal on it

Cakes of that era wouldn’t. But yeah, OP just paid some tuition and should proceed as you say. It might be a not-bad ripe cake.

Oh that’s interesting. When did the seals become a thing?

The seals came after the puerh circa boom in 2007 or so I think. Menghai was the first to apply them and now about all have them. Other factories have followed but Menghai is the number one counterfeited brand in China. Their market share is huge and they are trying to protect it.

Didn’t see in the description they call it raw. It took reading the fine print to spot that. Could be the seller didn’t even know it was a ripe cake. The OP could definitely file an EBay claim based on this and would probably get his money back. Proving it is a fake or not from the year 2000 is harder. If the sale was recent that is he could file a claim.

Seller meant the material that went into the cake was big leaf raw (before wo dui)

It might actually be perfectly fine tea. I have a fake 7542 I bought on Taobao that tastes virtually identical to the real thing and has aged well. Bought in back in 2009 and thought I’d found myself a great deal. :D

JayinHK – just curious (for educational reasons) how did you authenticate your fake tea that tasted identical to the real thing?

The main question is when did you buy this? If it was within the last 45 days I think you have time to file an EBay claim based on the fact that it was advertised as a raw cake but they shipped you a ripe cake. Proving it is a fake is a harder claim to make or that it is much younger than the year 2000 is also a hard claim to make but proving it is ripe is easy, just take a picture with your smartphone and included it with your EBay claim. If this is more than 45 days you have I believe 180 days to file a PayPal claim now. You can only file one of the two, you can’t file both.

@GonfuMatser fake Dayi’s are generally spotted by the way they are wrapped, or by there being something different about the wrapper, Dayi’s made since about 2008 will have a security seal that will glow green under a black light. Similar rules would apply to spotting a fake Zhong Cha but since there were so many companies producing tea under this label it is harder to spot in my opinion.

Since I don’t think anyone else has suggested there are some sellers of legitimate tea from China. I would recommend Yunnan Sourcing, White2Tea, Chawangshop, and Berylleb King Tea on EBay as well as Streetshop88 on EBay. Streetshop88 does have one or two questionable teas listed but generally I have gotten good tea from them. The other ones listed I have also bought from and gotten good tea. White2Tea sells mostly their own brands while Yunnan Sourcing sells a variety of their own brands and other factories tea. Chawangshop sells both their own tea and other factories tea as well.

Thanks for the information Allan, i probably wont make a ebay complaint 60 bucks is a lesson learned haha.
I have ordered some cakes from crimson lotus (house and branded) so will wait for them to arrive before comparing to the ebay if it even arrives that is..

You won’t have any issues with Crimson Lotus. They are a good outfit. I am getting ready to get some of their new release items soon. You should look up Toby on here as I think he is in Australia as well.

I only wish Crimson Lotus Tea produced their cakes full sized instead of 200g.

@andresito the price was too low for a cake of that age…that was the giveaway to the guys on TeaChat. I was a real newbie back then. That ‘2005’ is still around $15

+1 on this. There are a few “Trusted” ones I use.

Today, in China, they will make older cakes to order, and at the price point you want. They even use non-pu erh to make fake cakes with low grade green tea from Guizhou and the like. This is a huge problem up there

I did realize they would bring in low grade tea from other regions to make fake puerh cakes with. I just don’t know how to spot this when you get one. I mean does the tea look different? Or is it possible to spot it by taste?

Allan, I think it’s only done to replicate low grade shu. I had some astonishingly bad shu in Shenzhen that must’ve been fake tea as it was just horrendous!

Real year 2000 tea is often much more than $60. If it was good quality in the first place it can easily be hundreds of dollars.

Good point, even if its bad ill save for “Guests” hahaha.

If it tastes good drink it by all means.

If you really taste no fermentation taste then it could still be old. So it might still be a fake but an old one. Or if you are really new to tea you might not realize the difference between something truly without fermentation taste and something with. I know I did not know at first. Bought a couple of teas that I thought at the time had no fermentation taste but I was very wrong. It’s something you won’t find out until you drink something that has really lost it’s fermentation taste. If it is really from the year 2000 it should have lost it’s fermentation taste. The 1996 CNNP from Yunnan Sourcing is in my opinion a cake that has really lost it’s fermentation taste. As are the 1996 Dayi Lao Cha Tou nuggets from ALiexpress King Tea. Many teas I have bought claiming to be from around the year 2000 or so turned out to still have fermentation taste leading me to question their age.

Yea im fairly new to Puer so maybe it has got a slight fermentation taste and just not crying out (im fermenting) when i drink it bahahaha.
Ill def be finishing it, my missus likes it more than the 05 silver peacock i have which i like more than the ebay CNNP ;)

If it really has cleared then they were probably telling the truth about the age of the tea at least. Sixteen years is about right for a ripe tea to have cleared with dry storage.

None of my cakes from that period ever had date stamps. Also since there were no authentication features back then it’s hard to tell the difference between real and fake CNNP from before 2007. What matters is that it is good drinking and that you like it!

I wondered about the date stamp too. Not sure what the oldest cake I have that was stamped. Somewhere around I have a 1996 CNNP, haven’t looked to see if it had a date stamp but I got it from Yunnan Sourcing so I’m pretty sure of the date.

Here is an example of a tea from a seller I generally trust on EBay. However this one I think is a fake. It is one of my favorite EBay sellers who has sold me some good tea. But this one I think is a fake as far as the age goes. We had a big discussion on here about this cake a while back. It is just too cheap to be a real CNNP sheng from 1997. Any time a seller is selling the tea just too cheap I assume it is a fake. In this cake I thought it was a more recent tea that was wet stored to seem like there was more age on it.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1997-yr-Aged-Top-CNNP-Zhong-Cha-Yunnan-YiWu-Wild-puer-Raw-Puer-Puerh-Cake-Tea-/330963454389

About the only seller on EBay I absolutely trust not to sell a fake tea is Berylleb King Tea. If you notice they have no really old CNNPs available for sale at all. This is because most old CNNPs are probably fake.
http://stores.ebay.com/beryllebkingtea/

This is why I only buy post-2007 Dayi if I’m buying from China. If I’m buying older pu, I buy from long-established vendors in HK—much less shadiness down here

I have a few vendors I would trust for older Dayi. Yunnan Sourcing for one when they have an older product. Berylleb King Tea is another I trust. White2Tea doesn’t sell any Dayi. Chawangshop I think is trustworthy but I don’t think they sell Dayi. In fact I don’t know of too many vendors selling older Dayi. Maybe Dragon Tea House but they have a reputation for selling fakes.

@JayinHK are any of those long established vendors you trust online shops?

@AllanK,

> We had a big discussion on here about this cake a while back.

Got a link to that? I might be interested.

Took a lot of searching to find this.
http://steepster.com/discuss/5496-pu-erh-of-the-day-sheng-or-shou?page=140&post_id=204167

@AllanK,

Thanks. I could see buying something like that if I thought it was 10-ish years old sheng that a vendor was claiming to be older.

I think I have dealt with this vendor via Amazon, with uneven results.

@aardvarkcheeselog I would guess that the actual age on that tea was in the vicinity of eight to ten years. I do think they were lying about the age, I just can’t prove it but all the sheng that age from sellers who are above reproach go for at least $200. They are selling it way to cheap is the biggest argument for it being a fake. I do still like the vendor and think in general his younger tea is generally good. In particular I have gotten a lot of good shou from him.

@AllanK,

Stages of puer shopping

1) Buy “fake” tea thinking it’s “real”
2) Spend endless hours searching for “real” tea
3) Shop for “fake” tea because at the price it’s Good Enough
4) ???

@aardvarkcheeselog I remember not being impressed with that tea but I will have to find it and drink it again. I have a different perspective on semi aged teas since drinking this about a year ago. Who knows, maybe now I’ll like it. In the past year I’ve drank a lot more in the way of semi aged teas and might think a little bit differently about this one. But my current stage of puerh shopping isn’t on your list. It’s 5) Have an attack of insomnia and buy tea at midnight or two am.

Much of the step 2 searching happens after midnight and before dawn.

Stage 4
Buy and store good stuff for a decade before touching it.

@mrmopar tragically, some of us risk running into the “can’t drink tea when you’re dead” obstacle if we try this.

I am one of that category.