u/friendlycartoonwhale

I just acquired this teapot at auction. Just over 100mL, the density is about 2g/mL (within the correct range for zisha). It pours and stops nicely and the pot smells faintly of tea after emptying it of hot water. However there are some red flags that I feel nervous about and I would like outside opinions about the authenticity of this teapot.

1. The texture of the clay is disconnected around the mouth of the teapot. It is lighter in colour and this light colour area has a little lip on the inside of the rim[7,8], as if it were clay added on after the fact. In general the texture of the body looks weird in pictures
2. There are concentric lines inside the pot[4,7,8], but I don't think it's necessarily jigger jollied because the lines aren't parallel with one another[8]. My impression is that there was just excessive scraping done on the inside of the pot
3. There are some bits of clay on the underside of the rim. I suppose this is just an artifact of slab construction
4. The pot in general is kind of grimy. Is the black stuff[4,7,8] just tea gunk or could it be mold?
5. I haven't seen this exact 中國宜興 seal before

My impression is that it's zisha, just a lower quality half-handmade factory pot. Things like the internal lines and the extra clay on the rim seem like bandaid fixes to get the pot out of the factory. What do you think? The same seller is auctioning a couple nicer-looking pots later today, so I'm grateful for any positive or negative feedback as this could affect whether or not I bid on these.

The online market for Yixing teapots in my country is quite competitive. Every now and then an authentic zisha piece will be listed for cheap by a clueless seller; it will be snapped up reliably within a few minutes of posting. This piece, however, has been up all day, and I can't figure out what these snipers have seen that makes them not want to buy it. I guess the questionable points for me are:

• The seller isn't totally clueless. The piece is listed for a little over $50, and the seller describes it as a zhuni teapot. Their sales history includes many Chinese antiques
• The handle seams look a little soft
• It's hard to assess the texture of the clay from these highly compressed photos
• The top and bottom slab seams are just barely visible, to the point that I'm not confident that what I'm seeing are seams at all
• The lid knob is proportionally maybe a little large

I would love to know everyone's thoughts as to whether or not this is a real zisha pot. These photos, direct from the listing, are better than many but of course don't give ideal coverage for assessing authenticity. I recently broke my only teapot, so I'm keen on getting a replacement.

Full-quality photos: https://files.catbox.moe/sw2caq.zip