If you know what things are worth, there's no deals to be had!!
 
It's sooo frustrating.
 
I feel like the courts have made price fixing legal.

I can answer that since I've had to put a lot of things up on eBay lately.  It's because eBay and Pay Pal nail you with  fees and shipping is a joke.  
 
Take an amp that you sell on eBay for $900.  You then get an additional $100 to ship it.  Here's what happens:
 
eBay takes 10% of the gross (so $100)
Pay Pal takes 3.2% of the gross (so $32)
The shipper takes $108 (because, after proper double boxing and insurance, it ALWAYS seems to cost more than you get).
 
Total you got from the buyer:  $1,000
Total you don't get to keep: $240
 
Net proceeds: $760
 
So, if a "good deal" for that amp might have been $800, the seller still loses $40 when he sells at $900!  A careful observer will notice that eBay and Pay Pal ended up with $13.20 of the money intended to ship the item!  That's the part that pisses me off because I'm losing 13.2% on the money coming to me, but I'm losing 100% of the fees being taking out of the shipping.  The best way to offset this is to raise the shipping rate to compensate, but then people won't buy because of the shipping costs (and, with gas prices high, shipping has gone way up).
 
This is exactly why selling locally is the best bet if you can.  I can sell the above amp for $800 and someone will think "Cool!  $100 less than on eBay!" and yet I make $40 extra.  Of course, there's also the fact that buyers on eBay seem to think they should be able to purchase something worth $500 for $270, but that's a different issue.

Ebay is a place to find things you can't get anywhere else. Some things are very reasonable--I got a CMOS backup battery for an old laptop for about $4.00 including shipping from Hong Kong. the cheapest I could find from any US supplier was $17.00 with about $4.00 shipping by US mail. I have only ever bought about a half dozen items there, always something hard to find for a reasonable price elsewhere. The buy-it-now and store prices for commonly available stuff are not usually an obvious bargain. 
 
But as an auction house it suffers from far too many buyers. At a small auction you might find one person who is willing to bid far more than something is worth because either he just has to have it or he just does not know what it is worth. On eBay you can expect hundreds of such over-bidders for any item that might be popular. I am always astonished at what people think their used computers are worth.

I was ripped off in the past and have a new policy. I only buy from brick and mortar businesses that also have an eBay store. Although, I once bought a stereo from a guy in a Florida jail. Long story.
 
I find the business people that also sell on eBay, offer really accurate descriptions and good photos. I usually buy stuff after it's been around a while and get slow stock or end of model sales. The used stuff they deal in is also a cut above used stuff from individuals.
 
I never sell on eBay. Anyone interested in a wiring harness for a 1962 Strat? Seriously, I have one.

I buy occasionally, but stopped selling for precisely the reasons Craig laid out.

I sold a bunch of used guitar pickups, a Tom Schultz Rockman and an old Boss 4 Track Recorder recently.  I used the money to buy a couple of pick ups for my Les Paul (Pearly Gates) and my Epi Dot (Gibson 490R).  Also, just got a loaded pick guard for a Strat mod that I am doing.  Shoot, Ampfixer, I would have jumped on that a couple of weeks ago.
 
Anyway, I discovered all of the hidden fees that you all speak of.  Got the Ebay bill a couple of weeks later.  It seems to be a lot better deal for the buyer who is looking for a hard to find item.  There was plus's an minus, for me with my experience.  I am not sure that I would have easily found a local buyer for the Rockman or the Boss 4 track at the prices I got for them.  I got a pretty good return for the Rockman, almost what I paid for it back in the 80's.  It's nice in my busy life to just be able to mail the sold item instead of having to take the time to meet with someone in person.  The only avenue I have found for local sales is Craigs List, which is a whoopin'  in itself.  The last item I sold there was an Epi LP.  Talk about 50 text messages of ridicules low balling.  At least one person who didn't show for the face to face meeting. 
 
Now I have the Gibson 490T that I took out of the Gibson LP and I am trying to decide what avenue I want to take with that.

I have the wiring harness for the strat and I can't figure out how to sell it. eBay pricing is all over the map and there are no comparables for this thing. I don't do Craig's list for the reasons that Make Shift mentioned. I know guys that make a point of low balling offers. It's kind of sick because they work on a guy to get the price down and half the time they don't follow through with a purchase.
 
It was much better when there were lots of private music stores to sell to. They're all gone now and replaced by big box stores that don't want to deal in vintage gear.

Which is why we need a buy, sell, trade sub-forum here. :)
 
 

Ebay died a slow painful death a loooong time ago. The fees and ridiculous policies implemented after the general population got computer saavy enough to use it but were still too stupid, unreasonable and demanding to appreciate it for what it is was the first blow (Ebay was supposed to be like an online flea market/garage sale but whiners expected it to be freaking WalMart).
 
The rise of Amazon was the second (which Ebay scrambled to emulate which they NEVER should have done... they should have let the annoying WalMart crowd flood over there and went back to being cool).
 
Then there were corporate shenanigans and government regs and banks all putting their usual smear on everything and trying to take their cuts.
 
So you end up with all the old school sellers getting run out of business because it was a losing prospect (who then got replaced by huge warehouse freaks or people WAY overcharging for stuff) and a bunch of dumbass buyers who'll give you a negative and a chargeback without even contacting you because they didn't get their item 2000 miles away the next day (even though the seller specifically stated it takes a week for shipping) or they get their item which was listed as USED!!! NOT WORKING!!! FOR PARTS!!!! and expected it to be new in the box.
 
Seriously people are simply too stupid to use ebay because they refuse to read terms or descriptions and corporations are too damned greedy to not squeeze every penny they can out of it even if it chokes the life and spirit out the venture (and besides... all those poor people selling stuff aren't supposed to get a cut!!! THEY'RE JUST PLEBES!!!).
 
Just like the rest of the internet Ebay was wild, untamed and actually really cool and useful. The powers that be could NEVER stand for such a thing. So now we have McEbay's instead of the online fleamarket/auctionhouse it was intended to be. Don't want to hurt anyone's feelings or make them take even an iota of responsibility as a consumer or most importantly let some unworthy dreg make a little money for himself without paying homage to the corporate overlords.
 
Urg...
 
Sorry, ebay makes me angry. I'd still buy or sell something on it if I deemed it worthwhile but the "worthwhile" part seems to have completely disappeared from the equation.

 
Doesn't eBay own PayPal? So they actually fleece you twice on most transactions
 
I run a (very small) eBay Seller account for a local charitable organisation which we use to sell items donated to us. As a registered charity, eBay refunds all our insertion and final value fees so we keep 100% of the price of anything we sell. PayPal on the other hand still take their cut on every sale when our customers purchase using them. Still, it's better than having to cough up the full fees to eBay.
 
We did have to register the eBay account with PayPal Giving Fund before we could get up and running, and they make you jump through so many bureaucratic hoops that I'd imagine it's almost impossible to blag a charity account if you're not a bona fide organisation.
 
In these circumstances, it's understandable that I have to be completely above board with every sale, and also account for every penny of every transaction.
 
However, I must admit that I've been less stringent with my personal account in the past, and for just the reasons Craig mentions. I'm guessing there must be an awful lot of this under-the-table trading going on, hence the honest dealers are forced to pay the exorbitant fees eBay level to make up for their 'losses'. I've only been led astray a couple of times - and only when there were 'more expensive' items being sold or purchased.
 
It's a pity, but I can't see the eBay/PayPal monopoly being broken any time soon. We even have free-to-buy/sell sites like Gumtree over here, but they don't get a fraction of the traffic eBay attracts.