[raulus]

But you probably already guessed that much.

While eBay has definitely declined in terms of the opportunities for buying stuff, I'm not experiencing the same platform challenges that others are mentioning here.

Part of the problem with the dearth of available auctions for quality stuff is probably the new $600 threshold for 1099s, and the other piece is probably the decline/migration of PWCC off of the platform. Both of which have conspired to leave basically only a lot of BINs at high retail/museum prices.

I'm a big fan of the authentication service. Especially as a seller. I've never had it trigger a problem, and I take some comfort in knowing that a rogue buyer can't just claim that he never got the piece that I shipped to him, or it wasn't in the package or something. Although I can see how it would suck to have a perfectly legitimate piece get bounced by the process, particularly for some nonsensical reason like claiming the piece isn't a trading card.

I have had a couple of times where raw pieces were authenticated, but they found flaws that were not disclosed in the listing. eBay contacted me and gave me the option of accepting the item with the (now known) flaws, or rejecting it. And that seemed like a relatively benign solution - let the buyer decide if they still want the piece if there are problems that weren't disclosed. For anyone who feels like the authentication process is hijacking their purchases, having this option gives you the ability to avoid having your deal cancelled.