Yixing teapot on ebay ? Good or bad idea ?

I am by NO means a yixing pot specialist so please take that into consideration here however that pot looks very glossy and from what little I know I think I know that yixing should not be glossy like that. Please do not just take my word for it but wait for other responses.

No, it’s not too glossy, it’s just new and probably been rubbed with a soft cloth and lit that way. Color looks fine too and it’s a classic shape. The photo of the inside is not clear enough to let you determine for sure how it was made and together with the small dome strainer leads me believe it was probably slip cast. But for your first Yixing pot you’re not looking for collectability as much as utility and the experience of seasoning a pot for taste. So at around $40 US I think it’s fine.

Hello dear friend from France :) I would recommend you to post this on TeaChat’s Teaware & Accesories forum (link below). I recommend this because several forum members in that board are extremely knowledgeable about yixing. From what little personal experience I have (I own several yixing pots myself), the pot you linked does look glossy as Azzrian said, but some pots are made this way by adding a coat of waxing or something else to make it look more appealing, but generally this is one key indicator (of many) that determines the pot authenticity.

It is honestly hard to tell from pictures a real from a fake yixing. The absolute best way is to see, touch, smell, and compare a real pot and a fake pot. Most people end up buying fake pots when they first start with yixing, but that’s just the way it is, especially when buying from the internet. This particular pot looks too smooth, slightly glossy, and what little I can see from inside the pot, it looks wheel thrown or slip-cast (usually yixing pots are not wheel thrown). But again this is just from what I can tell from the pictures, I could be wrong so take everything I say with a grain of salt. I do strongly recommend posting this or showing it to someone more knowledgeable.

Foolongthehill may be right about the lighting and as Mike G said – it is really difficult to tell from photos however I just am not seeing any real “grain” in the pot, meaning its almost TOO smooth or has no visual texture …here is a great article on buying yixing … http://verdanttea.com/intro-to-yixing/

Teavivre has some. Have you checked them out? And purepuer.com?

check berylleb a seller on ebay. i would say chineseteapot merchant but he only ships to the us. yunnan sourcing may be another option on this.

Thank you all for your comments ! I will give a look at it.

Another thought, Poulpi. I always buy my Yixing teapots in the tea stores where I buy my Oolong in the Chinese section of Manhattan or Flushing, New York. It helps because the tea sellers there know me. It’s been a while since I was in Paris but if memory serves, Paris has two Chinatowns, one in the 13th arrondissement, and another in Belleville. Perhaps you could find some nice pots there and actually get to touch and examine them first.

Bonne chance!

This is a chaozhou teapot, not yixing teapot. From the photo, it looks like an ok chaozhou teapot. But you can only tell so much from photos. Generally speaking, on ebay, you wouldn’t go wrong with either Dragon Tea House or Yunnan sourcing (the latter one may have got out of ebay but they have yunnansourcing.com). There must be other good ones too. But these two, numerous people from online forums such as teachat.com have bought from them and vast majority is positive feedback.