For many things, from my recent experience, the eBay phenomenon worm has turned.
This coming from someone who has purchased and sold (which I sill will do) on tha' Bay, diligently, for some time.
What I think has happened is that there is a group/culture of people who assume that because they are buying something off of eBay it is less expensive than retail.
Recently I was looking for a small travel container for Zippo fluid. Without exception, every single vendor on eBay, I'm talkin' twenty-plus, were over retail. Some were right at retail, the rip-offs from the orient, then you get to pay more than the holder in shipping.
Yesterday I went on looking for some Richard Dawkins books, again, the prices were either the same as, or more than what Amazon sells the books for.
Keep in mind, Amazon does
not charge for shipping.
Then I did a Ask search for Dawkins books and found something curious... an eBay site called half.com that sells books for less than their listings, hmmmm?
These are not the only two instances, BTW, the same has happened with a recent pocket watch, knife, sword, wallet and a few other searches.
With the rare exception of a few sword vendors, estate pipe vendors, some hats and specialty clothing like Guayaberas, I'm pretty-much done with eFake.
The core cancer are the pro vendors matching/exceeding retail rates, driving all the pricing up, harming everyone.
Edit:
The other "issue" I have is with shipping prices. People are making money on shipping. It does not, and probably will never, cost fifteen dollars to ship a lighter, domestically.
Of this there is no doubt, eBay is looking the other way or encouraging it.
The real problem with that is that morons buy the stuff and pay these exorbitant shipping rates, encouraging the behavior for them and others. If no one did so, it would stop.