Public auction record — last verified 2026-07-18
What the market actually paid
7 realised prices and a handful of pre-sale estimates for named lots of aged pu-erh, gathered from public auction-house catalogues and trade press, each with a date and a source link. This is deliberately small and manually checked — not the "200-plus vintages, interactive charts" report our own 2026 campaign copy once implied already existed. This page is a free, honest preview of the larger, paid-access report described on the 2026 tracker campaign page.
13 lots
Dated, sourced, and labelled
"Realised" means a confirmed hammer or final price is public. "Estimate only" means the auction house published a pre-sale range but we could not verify a public hammer price for that lot — we show the estimate rather than invent a result.
| Date | Auction house | Lot | Tea | Qty | Estimate | Result | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-07-10 | Poly Auction, Hong Kong | 1548 | Tóng Xìng Hào raw pu-erh, seven cakes, c. 1920s | ≈2,246 g | HK$3,600,000–8,000,000 | HK$5,280,000 realised (hammer HK$4,400,000) | THE VALUE — Poly Auction result → |
| 2022-07-10 | Poly Auction, Hong Kong | 1530 | Raw pu-erh, six cakes, 1980s | ≈2,020 g | HK$880,000–1,200,000 | HK$1,056,000 realised (hammer HK$880,000) | THE VALUE — Poly Auction result → |
| 2022-07-10 | Poly Auction, Hong Kong | 1547 | Tóng Xìng Hào raw pu-erh, single cake, c. 1920s | ≈321 g | HK$660,000–1,200,000 | HK$816,000 realised (hammer HK$680,000) | THE VALUE — Poly Auction result → |
| 2022-07-10 | Poly Auction, Hong Kong | 1522 | Raw pu-erh, 84 cakes, 2000 | ≈30 kg | HK$400,000–800,000 | HK$480,000 realised (hammer HK$400,000) | THE VALUE — Poly Auction result → |
| 2019-11-24 | L&H Auction, Hong Kong | — | Tóng Xìng Hào raw pu-erh, seven cakes, 1920s | n/d | HK$5,800,000–8,500,000 | HK$8,400,000 (before buyer’s premium) | South China Morning Post → |
| 2019 | Tokyo Chuo Auction, Hong Kong sale | — | Fú Yuán Chāng purple-ticket raw pu-erh, 1920 | 2,235 g | — | RMB 23,110,000 (≈US$3.36m) | Essence of Tea → |
| 2021-12 | Sotheby’s Hong Kong — Tea Treasures (inaugural sale) | — | “Blue Label” raw pu-erh cake, 1950 | ≈330 g | — | HK$562,500 (≈US$71,600) | AsiaFinancial → |
| 2022-10 | Sotheby’s Hong Kong — Tea Treasures | 301 | “Tong Chang Hao — Huang Wen Hsing” raw cake, 1930s | n/d | HK$600,000–900,000 | estimate only, hammer not published | Sotheby’s digital catalogue → |
| 2022-10 | Sotheby’s Hong Kong — Tea Treasures | 305 | Kunming Tea Factory “Tie Bing” raw cake, 1960s | n/d | HK$100,000–140,000 | estimate only, hammer not published | Sotheby’s digital catalogue → |
| 2022-10 | Sotheby’s Hong Kong — Tea Treasures | 338 | “88 Qing Bing” raw cake, seven pieces, late 1980s | n/d | HK$500,000–750,000 | estimate only, hammer not published | Sotheby’s digital catalogue → |
| 2022-10 | Sotheby’s Hong Kong — Tea Treasures | 341 | “7542” thick-paper raw cake, eight pieces, 1980s | n/d | HK$400,000–600,000 | estimate only, hammer not published | Sotheby’s digital catalogue → |
| 2022-10 | Sotheby’s Hong Kong — Tea Treasures | 342 | “8592 Shang Jian” thick-paper ripe cake, eight pieces, 1980s | n/d | HK$120,000–170,000 | estimate only, hammer not published | Sotheby’s digital catalogue → |
| 2022-10 | Sotheby’s Hong Kong — Tea Treasures | 352 | Ludashu raw tea, batch #103, fourteen pieces, 2001 | n/d | HK$85,000–120,000 | estimate only, hammer not published | Sotheby’s digital catalogue → |
Methodology, in full
How this page was built
Every row above traces to a named auction house, a dated sale, and a public source — an auction house's own digital catalogue, a press release, or reporting from outlets that cover the Hong Kong and Beijing tea-auction circuit (South China Morning Post, THE VALUE, Sotheby's, AsiaFinancial, Essence of Tea). We did not normalise currencies, weight, or lot condition into a single index — each row shows the auction's own reported figures, in the currency and unit the house used, so you can check our work against the source.
We deliberately did not extrapolate a median, an interquartile range, or a volume-weighted average from thirteen lots spanning three auction houses and three years — that would dress up a small sample as a market index. Anyone building that kind of aggregate needs a far larger, continuously updated dataset; that is the harder, paid research project described on the 2026 vintage tracker campaign page, not this free page.
None of these lots are connected to a tea.money campaign or storage house. They are shown as public market context for anyone deciding whether to pre-purchase a harvest or reserve long-term storage — see the risk disclosure for what that context does and does not tell you about any specific pledge.