A friend of mine is selling his Casascius 2011 error 1 BTC coin

[Raize]

He's chosen to use Ebay. I purchased a decent sized set of 25 BTC and 1 BTC pieces from Mike in November 2011. This is the first person I know of from that purchase that has decided to actually sell. I've mostly been able to talk the others out of it.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2011-CASASCIUS-1BTC-Casacius-Error-Physical-Bitcoin-FULLY-FUNDED/253116709087

The reason for my post here is to let others know he is selling and to ask a question or two.

He has a new Ebay account and is being asked about escrow for his coin. Does anyone know what that means for an Ebay transaction? A quick search indicates that they prefer to use escrow.com for their transactions, apparently. Has anyone ever used this service and if so, how would they rate it? Thanks.

[dazedfool]

I've used escrow.com with large ebay and private transactions before. Buyer wires money to escrow.com, seller sends item to buyer, buyer inspects and releases funds, escrow.com wires funds (less fee) to seller. They charge something like 2-3% for the service and only step in if there is a dispute. I never dealt with a dispute, deals always worked out fine.

That said, ebay is generally very safe for the buyer due to the buyer protection program. If there's a problem, they can easily claim not-as-described or not-received and get a forced refund. Not so safe for the seller due to abuse of that system and chargeback risk. Be very wary of selling to new or low feedback accounts, internationally, or via offers to buy outside ebay (direct paypal or otherwise).

Good luck.

[Raize]

Okay, in light of what you are saying it sounds like he should prefer to use the escrow service then. Thank you very much for your input. It is greatly appreciated.

[AT101ET]

His starting bid is $7000. Less 10% for PayPal and eBay fees, he's looking at $6300 (not including postage and insurance). At today's rate, that's about 1.44BTC.
My advice is to start an auction on here for that price. There are no fees and using a reputable escrow on here like MJ or Blazed is much cheaper and more reliable. They're well known and highly trusted. Personally I'd trust them to sort out a trade dispute more than I'd trust escrow.com.
Those are just my thoughts though...