Aliasalpha: Fake? What was it?
Catshade: Question: Buying from a power seller is generally safer, right? Or is my assumption wrong?
Usually, yeah
I avoid them with games, antiquarian books and collector's items in general. Condition's often better with a private seller. Power seller's rarely actually grade items and when they do, grades are often wrong.
For most everything else, they're generally better.
Expressly avoid buying from Hong Kong, Russia, or foreign countries outside Continental Europe, Canada, the US, Autralia, and the UK.
Use paypal.
Feedback score is mostly useless since they made it damned near impossible to leave negative feedback of late. Read the older comments. It's pretty much impossible for a power seller to have feedback of less than 99% unless they kill people.
I've never had major problems with ebay, and I've bought a lot of stuff off of it. Go for buy-it-now when possible. Snipers (people who bid at the last 10 seconds or so using automated software) are annoying.