[Runscott]

Blair, Have you ever had a winning bidder open a case against you because an item you sold was sitting in customs? It locks up your Paypal funds. It used to be that I could not actually stop Canadians from bidding (the ebay software didn't work). If they won, I would warn them of the border and insurance issues, they would say "fine", then they would still open a case and sometimes ding me on feedback. Go figure, those nice Canadians.

In addition, I prefer to offer free shipping, but I can't do that with Canada because of the high cost of insurance, and I simply won't send a $100+ item off uninsured, especially when another country is involved. I understand your frustration, and I'm not sure if the border hold-up issue is Canada's fault, or that of the USA, but it's a problem. We've had this discussion here MANY times, and the non-US collectors have yet to convince me that I'm making a mistake. Maybe I am, but I'm still waiting for a convincing argument.

Regarding hockey cards, most hockey teams are in the United States, so the main hockey market is also in the United States. Not offering shipping to your PRIMARY market would be kind of foolish. The main market for baseball cards is the USA, regardless of the actual population of Canada.

BTW - we run into the same issues with pool cues. There are some really major buyers of expensive cues in Indonesia, Japan, and other far east countries. Unfortunately, it's just not safe to ship to most of them. If ebay protected both buyer and seller in a fair manner, it might not be an issue, but they don't, so it is.

As it stands, I actually DO ship to non-US countries, but only via private, non-ebay transactions. More than anything, it's a problem with how ebay fails to protect sellers.