OK, rcv'd the super-super-cheap ebay pot today. As I have naught to compare it with but little Japanese kyusus and our artisan's pots my report is fairly meaningless, but here it is anyway (prior to actually brewing tea in it - it's soaking):
It's cute as hell. Very pretty and loveable and cunning. I see why people fall in love with these things even though this one's low quality. Darn.
Color on ebay pic is true - there's no unnatural patina that I can discern. The surface outside is very fine and smooth, inside a little rougher (but not sandy) with widely distributed tiny sparkly glints in bright light. None of those bits on the outside. Dunno what that indicates. Very new looking.
There's a barely visible seam line that runs from under the spout to the base, and also under handle. This pot is not pretending to be hand turned.
The lid is too small and can easily be wiggled back and forth within the rim, but doesn't leak when pouring or even held upside down. I wouldn't say that it turns terribly smoothly (compared to silky nice kyusus) - grates a bit.
The knob is in fact definitely too tiny to hold without covering the little hole; so far I really need two hands to pour this (it's 100ml). Awkward, but I'm used to gaiwan and kyusu style handles.
It smells like stone when wet with hot water, nothing funky there.
The walls seem very thin and delicate to me - don't know what's normal. The pot is much too hot to hold when full of off-the-boil water.
Lets see - oh, pour (with just water) is smooth and seems fine.
There's a chop inside the lid as well as on the bottom, same as pictured.
I only care about basic function for $12, if I can even expect that, and will see what it does with tea in it.
I've
decided that it's too cute to be toxic, because after reading all of those archives the clear conclusion is that it's a thing that one simply decides, because no one
knows unless there's several hundreds of dollars to throw at the problem, or intimacy with tea masters, or I suppose the experience that comes with starting with a $12 pot from ebay.
The upshot is that now I feel moved to save a little and search out a much better yixing pot. Maybe. I'm pleased that we have such good artisans here in the forum, with clays that some say are helpful to their tea and such truly beautiful pots. Might be a much saner way to go, for me - I love the glazed ones I've gotten so far. But the little wrong-side-of-the-tracks yixing here is really charming. So are toxic people, frequently. Sigh.
(BTW - there's a thread in here somewhere in which a Chinese vendor attempts to explain that men like yixing pots because it reminds them of cupping women's breasts. Check out the "Nipples" teapot at Tea Hong. Aureole and all. So that's it.)
(And thanks for helpful replies!)
It was an impulse...
