If you have another way of protecting ourselves if I trade with someone not trustworthy please do share. This is the only idea I have of preventing myself from being sent $1 and then not having any way of proving to escrow I was scammed.
You would have two options to use escrow for this kind of deal
1) You you send the bitcoin to the escrow, the buyer would send cash to escrow, then the escrow would send cash to you and the bitcoin to the buyer
2) You accept a traceable form of payment, for example a cashiers check, or a Walmart-2-Walmart transaction. You would fund escrow, the buyer would send the payment, and if there is a dispute then the escrow can contact the company behind W2W and confirm the funds were in fact picked up by you (or confirm what actually happened)