Pu-erh Historian time again !!!
The 80/90 Xia Guan cooked bricks – used to be quite available, but not anymore – have at least 5 different versions. Its production spanned from the early 80’s to the mid 90’s. Knowing the intricate differences among the wrappers – as is quite often the case for pu-erhs! – is the key to narrowing down the potential vintage of the brick.
The two major groups are distinguished by the print on the wrapper “Net Weight 250g” and “Net Content 250g”:
“Net Weight” version – it appears as two characters “Jin Zhong”, and is generally considered to be the 80’s vintage:
“Net Content” version – it appears as three characters “Jin Han Lian”, and is generally considered later than the “Net Weight” – late 80’s to mid 90’s. Depending on the print of the simplified “Factory 厂” character, this group can be further divided into two periods:
The short “Factory” version (as shown below) is considered to be the earlier one (late 80 ~ 90’s) in the Net Content group:
The long “Factory” version (as shown below) is considered to be the later ones (mid 90’s):
The XG brick we are offering match the features of the Lot 348 brick in the 2018 L&H Auction:
(1) Net Content
(2) the paper is thin and has a horizontal texture
(3) the simplified “factory 厂 “ character is short.
There was a very informative discussion on T4U: