[pishpash]

eBay takes a 13%+ cut, then there's shipping, so you're looking at $300 after cost of business. If you're selling a lot, sure, capture that $100 difference. If you're selling one and dealing with buyers, you'll spend at least one hour taking pictures, writing the ad copy, doing client management, going out to ship + gas to get to the post office, risk of buyer return/fraud. Say you're worth $50/hour and you're being very efficient and do all that in one hour, you may end up with a net economic gain of $40-50 after all that. Is it worth it?

[Marsymars]

Whenever I sell used good, I use ebay to set the price, but I sell locally, so there's no shipping/fees involved.

Local prices around me always seem weirdly high - I sort ebay by cheapest price+shipping, match that, and that usually puts me cheaper than 90% of local listings and gets me plenty of interest.

TBH I'm not clear on why anybody outside of rural areas is selling on ebay for non-niche things.

[pishpash]

I can think of a few reasons:

1) Digital goods, so very little friction. 2) No liquidity locally so you go to the large market. 3) Selling large volume. 4) Some third party to verify payment when it's not cash.

There are more and more alternatives though.