Why?
If you could get something on eBay for a lot cheaper wouldn't you do it? I understand you're mad because you can't get what you want for your cards, but if the shoe were on the other foot, would you pay more to him for the same cards you could get on eBay for cheaper?
Just because you can get everything on eBay for cheaper doesn't mean eBay is bad. Ebay is a market and whatever the demand for the cards is dictates what they sell for. Gone are the days of Beckett arbitrarily setting some price on what a card is worth. It's only worth what people will pay for it and eBay has proven so far to be the best source for finding that out. I have a couple of cards in my collection that are "priceless" to me (like my Ruben Sierra bat card--thanks HOFerAutoCollector), but on eBay they aren't very expensive, and if I was to sell them, it wouldn't matter what value I place on them, it only matters what value others place on them. If they don't think my Sierra bat card is worth the $1,000,000 I think it is
they aren't going to pay that for it, period.
Do you ever just go into Best Buy and buy a expensive electronic gadget without looking for a sale or comparing prices with other stores? Would you deliberately go into Best Buy and pay $3000 for a plasma television that you could get at Wal-Mart for $1500? Of course not, that would be really stupid. So why is this person bad for the hobby when they follow that same logic when it comes to buying cards?
I used to have the same attitude as you. I would be so mad when I would pull a card that would book for $100 and see it selling on eBay for $25. It took me a while to realize that book value, etc. are ridiculous. You can only get what someone is willing to pay. Somedays it might be alot. Somedays it might not be. But, eBay, even with all it's problems is a blessing to the collecting community. How hard do you think it would be to complete autograph sets and game-used sets if not for eBay? Would people have such large player collections without eBay? Without TCC and eBay, I would never complete my 2007 Finest Moments Auto set, because I would have to buy hundreds of boxes from my local hobby store hoping to get one of every auto in that set. I could never do it. I would go broke and still not get every one I need. I'd have to travel the country going from show to show trying to find every one. It would never happen. I just don't have the resources.
Perhaps that's why many hobby shop owners do not like eBay, but every hobby shop owner I know sells sells and sells on eBay. They recognize that it's the best outlet for letting the most people see their product. Otherwise, all those cards of people that no one who visits their store cares about, would never sell, but on eBay they can, because somewhere in Alaska, there's a guy with a computer who loves to collect Mike Gallego cards.
You can be mad at that guy all you want, but that's not going to sell your cards. If they aren't valuable enough to you for you to keep, then the longer you go without selling them, the longer they aren't worth
any money in your pocket.