I am quite an ebay fan. The reasons are that its convenient, the pricing is competitive and the buyer is quite protected, in fact perhaps more than if one were to operate in the physical markets. Also, some of the prices can never be achieved in the physical retail market since many of the ebay sellers are wholesalers and do not have costs of setting up a fancy showroom and salaries etc and can cut down costs quite significantly.
Ebay really rocks but one needs to figure out how to make it work for them