entropyembrace wrote:My 30 year plan....
Buy tea I like when I have money to spend on it
Drink teas I like whenever I feel like it
enjoy life and enjoy tea
Well, and drinking tea whenever i feel i like it (which is every day) needs some future planning. Some of the teas i like are very rare, not cheap, and take quite some traveling to get them.
Others, such as high quality older Pu Erh, i could not afford to buy. That is why i have to age them myself. Which is also a huge joy - smelling them regularly, tasting them once a while to see how they develop.
I am very glad that i started storing Pu Erh a bit more than ten years ago, and have a nice supply of good now drinkable tea, and will have in a few years, before Alzheimer sets in, several very good 20 year plus teas to drink without having to rob a bank, while at the same time i have a more than sufficient supply of ten year plus teas for every day drinking.
Over the past years i have seen the price of top quality tea rise incredibly. If that continues there may be a time when i may not be able to afford the teas i like anymore.
Already good older Yixing tea pots (70's and earlier, when they were still fired in dragon kilns) are now so expensive that i cannot afford them anymore (and there are so many fakes around now...). Fortunately i have enough tea pots which i bought 10 to 20 years ago, and don't need to worry. The same is happening with tea cups. I like tea cups from the Qing dynasty (Ming would be nicer, but good ones are really rare and expensive), many i bought some 17/18 years ago, often for a dollar a cup. The same cups - if you can find them, which is increasingly difficult - now cost 30 dollar or more a cup, will only increase in price and rarity. I don't need any more pots or cups, and only buy tea when i feel like it.
The more affluent China gets - the more expensive teas and utensils will become, and the more difficult it will be to find them. Just ask around any of the tea centers outside China, such as in Taiwan and KL - mainland Chinese buy up everything now - old teas, tea pots, etc, and for enormous prices. 20 years ago Taiwanese went around emptying the markets, hording pots and teas. That's when cheap cultural revolution Shui Ping pots, for example, leaped from a few dollars a pot to very high prices (and still rising).
Some years ago, i had a difficult time financially. At the same time i ran out of good teas, could not afford to buy them, and was mostly stuck with very mediocre teas for about two years. I do not want a repeat of that. If i am broke, at least i want to still have good teas.
It does take quite a bit enjoyment out of tea when i would need to think that i have not enough good tea at hand, would have to use mediocre pots and cups, etc.
Now i just chose a pot and cups out of the shelve i feel like using for any particular tea, have a nice selection of good to very good teas, and simply enjoy.