20 years ago I was in the auto wholesale/auction game, and while it is not a direct apples to oranges comparison, I see many similarities of how the big auctions ran themselves into the ground and ebay's current misguided direction.
There was a well know auction house around here that had 6 lanes running, nice customer service, took care of the little guy, then the market really boomed. They started to cater to the big sellers/dealers with the huge number of trade ins and large volume, soon the added 6 more lanes and the smaller sellers had a rough time getting early numbers for there products to sell. Eventually a lot of smaller sellers moved on, to other auction houses and within 2-3 years they were back down to 6 lanes, begging for the little guys to come back, because they were the ones that were purchasing from the big dealers. Now it is mostly foreign buyers who buy there and ship to their country to resell, but the auction houses profit margins took a big hit, resulting in huge fees for the remaining big volume sellers.
Only problem is there is really no other Ebay type auction place for us small seller to go, but eventually most will find another alternative or leave the business entirely.
 | 
