eBay Alternatives  

As
As irritating as it can be, eBay really is the best place.
You have the largest possible audience, which for any selling format, auction or otherwise, has to be the best.

I've heard that Ebay...
I've heard that Ebay basically want to get rid of all the 'ma and pa' (their term) sellers with secondhand stuff and turn it into a fixed price site for cheap consumer goods. They've done a deal with Buy.com who will buy millions of listings to sell cheap imported crap. And out go the people who made it what it is in the first place. Such a pity but thats corporations for you - same mentality that 'improved' all the good places to buy old stuff in London and ruined 'em all. There's an auction site called Ebid but its got a way to go before I'd think of it as a serious alternative. Craigslist seems to get scoured pretty thoroughly in the US?

Have
Have you seen the 'Collectables' on Ebid ?
I'm all for competition for eBay..but it isn't in place yet

Listing strategies on eBid have to be different
If you list on eBid, which I think is the most likely rival to the big one, you must adopt different strategies. In effect, you must assume that the first bidder will win the item so treat it like a shop not an auction and prepare for a long wait. If you are in a hurry for the cash, then it has to be eBay.

grasshopper
Are you near a big city? I've heard of people getting good prices when they sell on Craigslist but i think you have to be near a good market.
It won't cost you anything to list so might be worth a try. I sold some nice MCM walnut/cane door cabinets for a decent price on CL here in the Baltimore area. I thought about listing them in NYC too but they were too big for the average car or even van so that kinda ruled that out. Not worth making two trips or renting a truck to get them. But a Bertoia bench is much more transportable.
It can take awhile to sell higher-priced items on CL but I think it can be worth the wait.

Why not just find a local...
Why not just find a local specialist dealer and sell it to him/her? With a specialist you should get 50 - 60% of 'top' (but not 1st dibs obviously) retail price.
Good to hear I'm not the only one disenchanted by the way Ebay is going - I remember fondly the days when it was really quite exciting to sit down in front of the computer on a Monday to see all the great stuff listed on Sunday night. Madelaine's approach to Ebid sounds like very good sense. I guess the very fact people have heard of it means it may yet challenge the evil empire.

ebay blows
There's not really a great way to sell things like this these days. Even on craigslist things seem to be marked down super low for fast selling. I have sold a few things on craigslist in the Austin area, and I had to sell them super cheap.
Ebay is getting more and more full of crap. People are misleading about what they have and the condition. Plus people expect you to sell the item for well below what it's worth to compensate for high shipping costs. Furniture is always so costly to ship. It's not like we are collecting baseball cards here!
I think your best bet is Craigslist in a decent market, but like I said, you'll have to be patient to sell it for what it's worth. And at least you don't have to get duped because of shipping costs. And you don't have to go trough the insane hassle of shipping and packing furniture.
I had to ship and pack an Eames sofa myself once. It was no damn fun. It look me all night to get that thing packed well, not to mention it was a pain in the ass to get it to the shipper.

I have to agree about...
I have to agree about craig's list. But only if you are near a metropolitan
area. Pick up only. I have friends that swear by it...
I have never looked, ever.
(i did find my house through craig's! wierd that i went that route.)
i've not looked at 'craig's' since...
(an odd sunday, and eviction was eminent, i tried craig's, 10 minutes, and found my home)
We had been looking for a year...
A bench is a bit easier to pack than a large item.
I still think e-bay may be good for a bench or 'smalls'.
(i've never sold anything anywhere)
A high end item will be handled by an auction house easily.
I only have a couple things in that category, and looked into it
if ever the mortgage is in jeopardy. 🙂

You could try Wright...
You could try Wright auctions in Chicago. They'll take a percentage, but it weighs out usually. They do charge premium. A Bertoia bench is a very desirable item.

.
Anything less 10.000 sell on ebay, yes its a monolithic gorgon...but it must be fed!My first ebay sale was a crafstman vase for $3.000 if I had it in my shop here in Austin TX. would sit for a year easy... it went to N.Y.C...Craigs is, like people say, good near active market big cities...good luck...

room to grow
Design Addict should add a sperate buy/sell forum to the site. Then you can buy an sell with people who appreciate design and aren't trying to get you to go rock bottom on your prices. I know of other areas of interest that have sites set up to do just that, but none for mid century modern...your thoughts?

There is already
an ADS section, and people list stuff they are selling there, a well as place Want Ads
It is trawled wel lby the major search engines, and is how I first found the site, and subsequently the forum !