I kind of don’t want to promote it too loudly but I actually get most of my good deals as ebay auctions. It’s by far the worst way to list anything as a seller - it guarentees you a sale at the end date, but you will almost always make less on it. In the UK anyway, may vary regionally.
There are tactical ways to bid on auctions too, as the amount in which you need to bid to outbid someone else needs to exceed a certain threshold that’s relative to the cost of the item. With more expensive items you can sometimes lock yourself into a good price way before it’s ended as the only way for someone to outbid you is to overpay.
Btw grats on the 1999 account thing @darenager - even if you are abondonding. Mine is (nearly) that old and the last time I contacted support they treated me like a VIP because of it haha. It was a nice touch tbh