I made a mistake, this was a bad example, these 2 wrappers are
different.

The brush strokes on the large Chinese font across the top on #2 are
slightly thicker than on #1. The English font is about 1 point size
larger on #2 as well. The CHA symbol in the middle logo is also
different, look at the large cross in the middle of the logo, the arms
of the cross on #2 are shorter than the arms on #1. All of these things
can be used to point to specific production runs within the factory.

Also on # 1 the word "NATIONAL" was misspelled and actually reads
"NATICNAL". This type of misspelling is fairly common on Export
wrappers. Another letter that is often wrong is that a "U" will be
sometimes be represented by a "V". The misspelled wrappers can usually
be associated to a specific date range and factory location with a
little bit of research. This is the type of information that gets
documented in the Chinese Pu'er books.

Sometimes the differences are on the inner label or on the insert
instead. The same outer wrapper might have been used for all production
during 7 months where a certain inner label (with a specific typo,
defect, or other unique feature) might only have been used for one of
those months and then only on a certain specific recipe run. Other
differences might be how thick the outer red circle is in mm. Or the
diameter of the stylized CHA logo, or even the measurements of the
whole sheet of paper, not to mention paper fiber content and thickness.


It is every bit as involved as coin or stamp collecting and the nuances
easily mean the difference of thousands of dollars. Yes, I said
thousands, a single cake of appropriate pedigree and vintage can easily
fetch $3,000 or more at auction in Guangzhou, this is NOT an exception
but is rather commonplace.

Mike
http://www.pu-erh.net