I sell rare books on eBay for a living. My average sale is in the $200 range, but my largest ever was right at $6,000. The thing you want to remember is that eBay requires ID verification by your bidders in order to bid over $15,000. Most buyers will not submit to this process, so it makes selling items just over that difficult. Obviously, folks willing to pay $50,000 or more on a car or house are willing to put up with the hassle.
No, absolutely not. In fact I have a co-worker whose wife does exactly that (sells off her no longer needed household items and buys stuff she now needs) very successfully. She would not be able to make that a full time job, but it gives her the spending money to get the stuff that she wants now by getting rid of stuff that she no longer wants or needs. I believe that she has about 800 feedbacks since she started doing this many years ago, has a lot of fun, and gets to have the stuff she wants when she wants it without having a big budget to do so. My comments were directed at people who want to make eBay a full time business. That is very difficult to do and I have no plans in that regard. I spend most of my time and energy building up traffic to my own ecommerce site and let eBay chug along at its own pace.
Also, you should note that eBay just changed it's bidder ID system. Many of us who sell more valuable items are worried about the future implications. Only time will tell, but some of my previous customers are now nervous.
Hi guys, I run a growing free classifieds site at www.chiwidi.com that gets 500+ visitors a day (opened for a month). Feel free to list your items on it, just as you would on eBay (it's modelled more like eBay so don't expect a crappy Craigslist look) Thanks guys, Kevin