Make sure to figure in the shipping cost. There have been plenty of times that I've payed more for an item because the shipping ultimately made it cheaper.
There are a few sellers who hide the actual cost of the item in exorbitant shipping charges...but the good thing is that they generally can't hide what they actually paid to ship the item because the label will be on it when you receive it.
And though some of them try to tell you they factor in the price of a box (like two bucks), if there's a big difference between what they charged you for shipping and what you paid, there's always negative feedback, which sellers HATE, and is thus quite effective.
I've been using eBay for ten years, and have purchased items such as watches, model kits, cellphones and cellphone accessories, comics, books, movies, posters, art, jewelry, and several others. I have only legitimately been burned once; the rest of the times were my fault for getting too excited and bidding on an item which was ending soon without reading the full description.
But the one time I did get burned, I filed complaints with both eBay and PayPal (another poster was explaining the benefits of using PayPal with eBay, and I wholly concur; the two companies are actually affiliated now, with a direct PayPal link on the checkout page of those items which offer PayPal as an acceptable payment method). The result was that the seller's account was closed, and eBay gave me a 75% refund on the item.
