Posted By:
ElmI gotta chime in on this one. Saying that not offering PayPal DOESN'T cost you bids is completely disingenuous. Countless people, myself included, only bid on items with PayPal as an option, mainly for the reasons already mentioned in this thread.
I imagine the OP realizes this fact and that's why he's looking for guidance against scammers. Wish I had some helpful advice, but the only thing I can offer is this. If I were to sell an expensive item I'd use my digital camera to film me putting it in the envelope and sealing it, etc. Maybe even film the envelope being actually posted at the post office or UPS. If the scammer tries to pull something, you can forward the digital footage to PayPal. With memory capabilities of computers these days, you could easily store these 'films' without overloading your machine.
Not a perfect solution, but a pretty decent one.
Edited to add: If for some reason you don't have one yet, digital cameras with video capabilities have greatly dropped in price. I have a Canon PowerShot SD1000 that I'm thrilled with. Very, very compact and the memory card holds a lot.