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Hello folks,
I'm a long time ebay shopper and I'm about to begin selling for the first time. I have some questions about your preferences for shipping.
I'm going to be selling some mouthpieces with no reserve, and have the buyer pay shipping via USPS. Due to the collectable nature of these pieces, I want to open the auction to overseas buyers. I notice that many sellers don't do this. Why not? Why do some buyers only ship to certain countries? As long as the buyer pays in advance with paypal, what difference does it make where I ship to?
Do you prefer to see the shipping/handling price as a flat fee out front, or to have shipping calculated after the auction?
What do you guys prefer for auction length? Long, short?
Thanks for your thoughts.

You answered the question regarding why some sellers won't ship to certain places. Some countries are more nortorious for fraud but taking payment via PayPal gives the seller some degree of protection. PayPal credit card payments (as opposed to debit payments) seem to be a bit suspect but as long as you wait to ship until the payment clears and is deposited into your account, you are pretty safe.

Customs forms for most countries are straight-forward. Declare the real purchase price and don't let your buyer talk you into committing fraud on the customs forms.

Make your auction listings accurate and to the point. Stick to the facts and avoid being subjective. Pictures work best.

Always get your money first, and always ship insured.

...and if you believe what you read on the eBay community BBS, get a separate ID to sell things with, so any feedback from selling won't affect your buying ID.

eBay is a nest of snakes, so act accordingly.

As an Ebay user who lives in Australia I wish more people would allow their auctions to be open to buyers from outside the USA. It's very frustrating to find sellers who are too closed-minded to consider accepting a bid from overseas, even with the guarentee that the item would not be shipped until funds are cleared, and that I would also pay all shipping charges and an agreed amount for handling etc.
Having said that, a good number of sellers put "US only" in their description by default but are fine about selling to me when I contact them, and they can check out my feedback and we agree on terms like before.

Every seller is right to be cautious about potential fraud, but this can be protected against by applying common sense. If I was selling I'd be extremely cautious about accepting a bid from some areas, but if the funds are cleared what is the problem? I don't know, but perhaps Ebay's default auction listing is for US only shipping, thus requiring a concious decision to be open to the rest of the world.

Cameron, the big problem with selling to Australia-NZ is shipping a large item such as a tuba. Do you know of any services that will allow a US shipper to get a large tuba to, say, Adelaide for less than USD$500?

True enough if the item is a tuba, but mouthpieces? But if shipping a tuba costs $$$$ and the buyer is happy to pay that, what's the problem?

Of course if the buyer only wanted to pay $500 then there's no sale.