I wonder how E-Bay sales relate to the overall economy?

A few years ago E-Bay was made up almost exclusively of private sellers, before E-Bay Stores, and all of those drop shipment sellers hadn't arrived yet. Back then you'd expect that if the economy fell off that E-Bay sales of used personal items would go up - sell the bling for the needed cash; that sort of thing. I'm not real sure just what you would measure, maybe sales by item cost or sales by low-feedback sellers, or something like that. Anyway it might be and interesting indicator of something or another - anyone seen any sort of work on it?

I'm interested in any info about this too. k & r!!!

Someone somewhere must be looking at this as an indicator.

I know I buy more things on EBay than ever before to save money.

Rarely used clothing - but I suspect that would be the best thing to track for your question.

People may be using this more even to save gas on prowling garage sales.

So it made it more lucrative (as a seller) to be a store owner, but it was at a cost. I ran an eBay store for about a year, to sell off our book collection and some antique dishes. I made decent money, but not what I would have liked. It was difficult to compete against the drop shippers and the mega merchants, especially when the economy started to really nosedive. The postage hikes didn't help, either. I would assume there are still people looking for items on eBay that are being sold used or below market, but there are so many other sources out there now like Amazon, Craigslist, wholesalers like Overstock, and consignment places, so the market has changed a lot.

I joined up and started using eBay back in 99. Back then it was actually worthwhile to use. Seems now people just list stuff at ridiculous prices... prices that I could go to a store and just buy new.. sometimes even cheaper. Do these people actually sell this stuff?

As far as selling I recently sold a video game. By the time I added up the listing fee, the selling fee and the Paypal fee, they had taken 10% of my sell price.... bunch of garbage.

I find craigslist to be a much better deal. Unfortunately eBay now owns a slice of it as well.