As Diana and Gina said you have to be careful and research what you are buying or selling on E-Bay.
Janet, with regard to the cost of selling. When you build your listing there are a lot of options for embellishing your listing to make it prettier or more attractive, list in more than one category and such. The value of the item, how much in demand it is, and the amount of competition, should determine how it should be listed. I always use a gallery picture which is what displays a picture of the item beside the title in a simple search. And my other listing decisons are based, again on the criteria just mentioned. If you don't go with a lot of the extras, the listing is pretty inexpensive. When you are buiding it, you are told what each item costs, and when you finish and preview you can see your total cost and go back and delete some of the embellishments if you want to.
The key is to know your market, and post really good pictures. Clean background, clear images. If it's an item that I think the bid will go high enough on, I'll add the feature of allowing them to supersize the pics. My thought is that if your pictures are good and clear, you aren't trying to hide any defects. So people can bid with greater confidence.
Happy E-baying!!!! I've sold items on line for much more than they would have sold for at a garage sale.
Oh, one other thing. I suggest that after you take your pictures that you box the item for shipping and determine accurately what it will cost to ship. I have listed shipping several ways, but prefer to only ship to the contiguous 48 United States and since I am in Texas, I will check out costs to ship to the most expensive case like New York City and/or Seattle and offer shipping one or two ways charging a fixed shipping cost for each option that I know will cover my actual cost of shipping and packaging and a dollar or so for my time and gas. You can use E-bay's shipping calculator or go to
www.usps.com &
www.ups.com to determine the cost.