China: Waterlow (London) Inverted Overprint: Genuine?

This Waterlow (London) inverted overprint on a 1 cent coiling dragon came with a batch of mostly valuable stamps I bought. This inverted overprint on 1 cent is known from the other types of overprint: Shanghai and Commercial Press, but not on this London overprint. Is it genuine of just a fake? The overprint is smudgy, but the cancellation seems to been applied OVER the overprint, and under the microscope this seems to be confirmed. And why would a fake been made with this kind of stamp: rather heavily cancelled and with a small part of an adjoining stamp attached. If genuine, this one would be unique, but I know all too well faking is very prone to Chinese stamps...


The inverted overprint. A rather smudgy one with a somewhat different red colour.


The inverted overprint compared with a normal overprint.



Microscopic image of the inverted overprint. The black cancellation seems to be applied OVER the overprint and not vice versa.

Is there a good reason why this stamp should have a Hong Kong CDS?

It could well be an arrival-cancellation, with the other one applied in China. Also: stamps of China were sometimes used together with Hongkong-ones, so that's also a possibility.

To compare the overprints, you could crop/copy and orient the overprints next to each other to compare the size/font.

it doesn't look good to me. The overprint looks rough and not smooth.

With the exception of the third character down, the characters are malformed. If that was a reign mark off a bowl, that would indicate either a forgery or some provincial production. So, maybe a fake, but that third character is close to the genuine example/

The rough impression of this overprint made me doubt if it's genuine. But then... why would someone fake an overprint that doesn't exist. Maybe he was not aware there is no inverted overprint of this London-issue. And why did he choose this used stamp and not a mint one?

Second character down (the one under 'Middle')- there's two dots to the left, as if the type for that character has become so damaged through use that two of the horizontal strokes have been reduced to those dots.

Maybe someone printed off a few "specials" for themselves after the overprint type became unusable?