As far as living without ebay - I could, but I have sold alot of stuff over ebay and made a decent amount of $$$.
Example: My grandmother had a yard sale. She had these old green ceramic canisters labeled for .50 and they didn't sell. Then, Martha Stewart started to publicly collect this "Jadite" stuff and I sold the two canisters on ebay for a combined total of over $350. Only on ebay can you sell your usless junk for hundreds of dollars
Yep...I've made alot of money on ebay. About a year ago I found a guy on ebay trying to sell around 200 "computer terminals" removed from an airport. Basically it was an industrial computer with an LCD monitor bolted on top. His auction only sold one of those, because what normal person wants one of those?
Well, I bought the rest of them for $110 each, took them apart and sold the parts on ebay, and ended up with about a $4000 profit.