Originally Posted by degan

Part of it (for me) is the fees. I use to sell some stuff here and there on the bay. I could throw something up there with a cheap starting price and a basic ad and get a decent amount of bids and sell it for a acceptable price. Once and a while something I sold went for a little less than I thought it was worth, but I didn't really care because I had basically nothing invested in the ad and so taking a little less for it was not the end of the world. Gradually it seemed like ebay started charging more and more for the ad and pictures and promoting the ad and whatnot. Now if you want a decent ad it'll be a few bucks more. That doesn't sound like much, but if the thing you're selling is only worth ~$40 and you've already invested $5 on an ad, having it only get $35 at auction means you've lost 25% of the value of the item just trying to sell it. I guess people now aren't willing to take that risk and would just rather price it where they think it should be and if someone want it they'll pay for it.