Is ebay still there?

There were a few people this week asking us if we do take in pre-loved bags ( 2nd hand bags). I replied apologetically that all our bags are brand new but they try walking over at United Square ( I know there's a 2nd handbag shop there) or perhaps try Deluxmall ( a handbag forum) or ebay. This young lady looked at me as if I was from outer space, gently told me that there's no one buying in ebay anymore. I decided to investigate to find out what she said was true.

I went to 3 ebay site; USA, Singapore and Malaysia. There were a lot of sellers mostly in fashion category such as clothes, handbags and accessories. To my surprised, I realised that there weren't many transactions over these 3 ebay sites. Some of the prices were ridiculously high and others were quite reasonable, but no takers. I wondered what had change, is it Groupons? or what? Han suggested that I looked at digital cameras or rather men's gadgets corner. The results did not fair any better.

In my opinion, the world is getting smaller (globalisation-thanks to internet) and people are setting up their own blogs and doing direct selling instead of going through the complicated steps of setting up an account with ebay. I remembered when I was in University I came across many books on how to make money from ebay. This is something perhaps already in the past.

I am worried. Does that mean that no one is buying or looking out for bargains? Are they too many people selling? How are we going to differenate the real and the fake? Maybe one day we may return to good old shopping method, trying out the bags in a physical shop and bag their bags in an old fashion way.