Old Yixing teapots on Ebay

Does anyone have experience buying teapots from the ebay store

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? They have a large selection of yixing listed as pre-1960 at what look like reasonable prices, even allowing for ~$30 shipping. They also seem to have decent feedback and several repeat customers. Everything I read about buying Yixing--old or new--screams caveat emptor, but some of those pots look pretty neat to me.

Reply to
Bill Wolfe
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I was looking at his history to figure out if he partook of the common Chinese practice of setting up fake ebay accounts to give himself high ratings, and it's not totally clear. He's either doing that or constantly selling pots to the same people. I would be careful, this could be a scam.

Reply to
Alex

I personally won't buy any pot sight unseen, unless it's a vendor who will definitely take it back with no questions asked. Given the high costs, shipping and otherwise.... don't do it, especially if the pot is expensive. If it's cheap and you don't mind if it turns out to be crap, then it's not that big a deal, but given the age range you're quoting... that doesn't seem likely.

MarshalN

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Reply to
MarshalN

If you look at one pot after another you quickly notice that the griminess (which is despicably bad) is very uniform and black. I suspect that these are (badly) antiqued. Even if they were real, I can't think of any way they'd get that black without totally neglecting hygiene. Would you really want to brew tea in those? Nasty.

Cameron

Bill Wolfe wrote:

Reply to
Cameron Lewis

Also, I'm pretty sure that the pu'erh he's got listed is fake. I don't think Menghai was using the dayi wrapper in '99 and the cake itself looks no older than an '04.

Cameron

Bill Wolfe wrote:

Reply to
Cameron Lewis

Is there a way to report such things on eBay without already having been ripped off?

Reply to
Alex

Menghai was definitely starting to use the Dayi wrapper by 99. Now, whether it's real or not is another question, and I'm not an expert wrapperologist.

MarshalN

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Reply to
MarshalN

Just as Marshal said, buying yixing over the Internet is like gambling: you should only pay what you can comfortably afford to lose. I would advise that you keep your expectations low and be pleasantly surprised if the item turns out to be good.

I've ordered from maybe four or five Mainland eBay vendors now, and the majority of them provide substandard goods (note, Scott @ Yunnan Sourcing is, as most people on here already know, very decent).

About your vendor in particular: I've had a quick look at some of the "1900-1960s" pots and I'm not convinced. A forty year old pot is going to cost you much more than that, and, well, they just don't look forty years old. :)

Toodlepip,

Hobbes

Reply to
HobbesOxon

Sooner or later, we're going to see an eBay vendor flogging thick,

40-year-old Pu'er bricks, each with a fine contemporaneous Yixing pot inside it.

/Lew

Reply to
Lewis Perin

It's striking that no contributor to this lest can vouch for this guy. I've bought a few pots on eBay over the years. A couple turned out to be decent brewing vessels and wound up as gifts, Others dripped or had other functional problems and wound up in the trash. None were great bargains, though all were cheap. The idea of picking up a decent

40-year-old pot for $60 is very appealing, but I guess I'll stick with vendors like Brian Wright, who I know through experience or reputation. Thanks to all who weighed in! BW
Reply to
Bill Wolfe

There is also the fact that he's selling Meng Ku, Fu Hai, and Lang He products as "Menghai Tea Factory" stuff. While I think that Fu Hai and Lang He are in Menghai county, Meng Ku definitely isn't.

The reason I think that the vintage (at least) of the Dayi wrapped cake is fake is that the buds are too brightly silvery and the cake is just too green to be 7 years old. Since my '99 7542s are zhong cha label wrapped, I just assumed that they hadn't started with the dayi label yet.

Cheers,

Camer> Camer> > Also, I'm pretty sure that the pu'erh he's got listed is fake. I don't

Reply to
Cameron Lewis

export products, and by the mid 90s there were already wrappers that look similar to the Dayi wrappers we see today. I know for a fact that

1999 has lots of Dayi cakes, although I can't say if this one is or is not a fake.

MarshalN

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Reply to
MarshalN

Oftentimes scammers succeed because the price is too good to be true. If it's too good to be true, it often is. And I think a $60 40 years old pot falls into that category.

MarshalN

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Reply to
MarshalN

more than less likely this is a scam i love the feedback on this guy

Reply to
frogman18

I have bought 9 pots from Anling and found them to be excellent, although I couldn't verify their authenticity. He will sell you a certificate of authentification if you ask for it. At least three seem to be of pure zhuni clay, and a few other a quality clay mix. They were all very grimy but treatment with denture cleaner, toothbrush and q-tips cured them all. One is my best sheng puer pot, another brews delicious da hong pao, and a third is ok, really high-pitched ring with handmade indicators but I haven't figured out what tea works best in it. It has a flat shape. A fourth, thicker-walled is the one I use for high-mountain taiwanese oolongs and it really brings out their aroma. I have gifted 2 of the pots, and three are too big for daily use so they are sitting around my house.

What you can't tell from the pictures, but what Anling will answer to you if you ask, is how thick the walls are of the pot.

I had a great experience with him. But get ready to spend time clean> Does anyone have experience buying teapots from the ebay store

Reply to
danicaradovanov

The question is whether or not the grime is real grime from 40 years of use, or is it more like the slightly black wax they use to make the pot look old?

Does the pot feel "waxy" when you pick it up when it first arrives?

MarshalN

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Reply to
MarshalN

I will try and order one teapot - the I will let you know, what do I think.

I have about 10 yixing teapots, artisan and better quality, bought directly in china by a vendor I believe, so I think, I can see the quality of the pot.

Reply to
alendacka

Reply to
Bill Wolfe

My method for cleaning very dirty yixing pots is to scrub with baking soda and a soft cloth to remove the grime and boil like crazy in distilled water (better solvent action but not critical) through about

3 changes of water. This has worked on a number or old/forgotten pots I've had to clean.

The denture cleaner sounds interesting as long as it's not the minty kind :-)

Camer> I went ahead and took the plunge on two old "zhuni" pots that will run

Reply to
Cameron Lewis

The pots were not waxy, they were filthy dirty! The kind of grime that seems burnt on and drip-shaped. Some were downright scary! Which to my mind explained why they were so cheap. But lo and behold this denture product (non minty) called Sparkle that I bought on the internet did the trick. You have to use boiling water and put cleaner inside and outside the pot overnight. Then do a rinse soak in hot water for 8 hours. I didn't, which meant repeated brushings, and on some pots I even had to introduce whitening toothpaste to really get the grime out. Baking soda would have been much better! But they all got clean, I shined a flashlight inside and they were restored. I think that wax wouldn't have responded to denture cleaner the way that this stuff did. It also didn't leave any residue on my brush bristles, which is another reason I don't think it's wax.

Reply to
danicaradovanov

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