Thats a terrible analogy. Ebay sellers are scamming. Hes taking advantages of mispriced items and arbitrage opportunities of others' ignorances. The real currency -> gold mistake is, granted, crushing for the seller making the mistake, but part of the game.

There are also people who just don't care enough to put in the time to sell items for their real value. I never sold much on the RMA, but when I sold stuff on the GAH I would eyeball the item and just throw a price on it that I think would get it to sell fast, but still get me decent gold. I didn't play Diablo to make money, I was there to have fun.

The author seemed pretty convinced that many of the prices he was spotting were probably supposed to be real-money prices -- e.g, an item that was supposed to sell for $100 would instead be sold for 100 gold. (Which is a trivial amount, even in game.)

this happens more often than you think in games that have two systems that can be confused with each other. EVE online is a good example (except instead of real currency, it's just mis-typed zeros and bad UI queues)

It's more like ebay sellers accidentally mistyping their initial price / buyout value and still be required to send their item for that price. Actually that happens from time to time in for example webshops, accidentally listing items for $1 instead of $300.