My wife buys and sells on ebay all the time. I've done so several times too, but she does it a lot (mostly selling, thank goodness!) and it's amazing what people will sometimes pay for stuff. Things that you could sell at a garage sale for 50 cents to 2 dollars she's dumped for $10 to $50 or more. Hell, she had a cake pan in the shape of a teddy bear that sold a few years ago for almost $60 - for a freakin' cake pan!!! That might have been a dollar item if we'd had a garage sale.

Several years ago I wanted to upgrade a computer I had. I knew the motherboard would support an Intel P4 processor up to 2.8gHz and I was running a 1.6gHz processor at the time. I found a new 2.8 at a killer price so I bought it, installed it, then listed my used 1.6 unit. When it sold and all was said and done, I did the upgrade for a whopping $11 or so.

You do need to shop around though. I've seen people list things on eBay for more money than Amazon charges for the same thing, plus Amazon offers free shipping on purchases over $25. I saved a couple hundred bucks buying a 32" flat screen TV from Amazon instead of any of the eBay listings or even local sales. I see eBay as another source for anything and everything, but I comparison shop with it.