I have missed so many good ones and I have been burned so many times from ebay I am kind of "gun shy" (pardon the pun). I bought 2000 .45 ACP once fired from a guy for 9 bucks. I missed 2500 .44 mag once fired for 12.00, leopold scope3-9 still in the box new for 40.00, 9 sets of RCBS dies various calibers for 25.00. There is a service or was where you pay a small fee and it automatically snipes the auction in the last minute. You enter in the very highest you want to pay and in the last minute the server automatically bids for you, never used it but it sounds interesting.
I have also been burned, bought a near new 650 orig. Carter carb from a guy in Vancouver to restore my Dart, what showed up was an old beat Edelbrock reproduction. His excuse was he sent the wrong one and to return it and he would send out the correct one, last I ever heard from him.
I bought a slightly used Lee 1000 in .45ACP, "My uncle used it for about 2 month's before he got sick and passed away". I specifically stated in the correspondence not to send it UPS but regular USPS mail because of the high cost of brokerage fee's. It arrived when I was not home and my daughter received it from the UPS guy. I was furious at the 42.00 bill I couldn't believe it. Of course when I opened the box and looked at the press the "uncle" must have reloaded for the US Army before he got sick because this thing is beat. It is so sloppy in the ram and the indexing that I had to strip it down and replace about 60 bucks worth of parts that had either broken because of bad packaging or worn out. SO by the time the smoke all cleared, I could have ordered a new one from Higgonson's for 15.00 more than what I ended up paying.
I went the the ebay customer service complaint "jumping thru the hoops" to try and refund my money (before I had to fix it myself) and they were absolutely useless.
I phoned the police on the guy from Vancouver and the officer on the phone basically said "buyer beware" and that they couldn't do anything. HE said he gets about 5 calls a week from people with the same complaint.
People will sign up on ebay with fake ID and credit cards and sell 20-30 items over a 2 month period, small 10-30 dollar items to build up there rating, mean while copying pictures from higher priced items that other people are selling. Then they will list a whole batch of higher priced items with the pictures from other people and a little bit of photoshop if needed and ask for money orders. He knows of one guy that walked with 14,000 bucks.
So the bottom line is to look at the feedback first, make sure the seller doesn't ship by UPS and good luck.
