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Re:The funniest thing I ever did – a.k.a. "How To Make $100K... by toast0 on Sunday January 05, 2025 @12:44PM (#42603434)
From my perspective, eBay has a solid niche of older items, and they tried to break into the buy new items market too, but the hassles of selling mean for the most part only scalpers sell new items on eBay. Although there's some niches where it's not unusual: new auto parts seem common, I guess it's easier for a dealer parts counter to run an eBay store than otherwise.
Re:The funniest thing I ever did – a.k.a. "How To Make $100K... by potato3732842 on Sunday January 05, 2025 @07:32PM (#42606339)
I find that for a lot of "cheap junk from China" gets cheaper when you eBay it directly from China and cut out the cost of the Amazon middle man.

Recently I bought a chainsaw tool on eBay from China as I didn't want to buy a 6-pack for $10. I was able to buy a couple for about $0.20 more per unit. Sure, higher unit price and they'll be here slower but it's several $6ish saved.

Re:The funniest thing I ever did – a.k.a. "How To Make $100K... by asddubs on Monday January 06, 2025 @03:44AM (#42608872)
ebay seems relatively competitive with aliexpress, sometimes even cheaper. amazon everything seems to cost much more
Re:The funniest thing I ever did – a.k.a. "How To Make $100K... by lotsofpulp on Monday January 06, 2025 @09:30AM (#42610826)
Amazon has free returns on almost everything, so if comparing prices for the same item, the cost of free returns has to be added.
Re:The funniest thing I ever did – a.k.a. "How To Make $100K... by pjdesno on Monday January 06, 2025 @09:14AM (#42610692)
I mostly use eBay for buying computer and bike parts - e.g. my most recent purchase on my work (tax-exempt) account was a batch of a specific model of 40Gbit NIC, and a specific type of bike seat post on my personal account.

The eBay search function isn't great, but it's vastly better than Amazon, where search results are polluted by large numbers of garbage sponsored results - this may be related to its success in these niches. (although in my case it's partly because I can avoid paying for Amazon Prime, and still choose things based on prices that include shipping)