Is this reasonable?

There's ups and downs to both eBay and trading. You seem to know all the ups of trading and downs of eBay but there's positives and negatives to both.

Sure you're overpaying on eBay but you know you're gonna get a box with what was agreed upon or your money back. You can't get screwed out of a box with the bottles that were agreed upon...it just results in eBay giving you back your money and prosecuting the guy that sold them if he doesn't give the money back to eBay. A lot of them are traders and homebrewers also so they like beer and cellar it along with their own stuff which means they're not sticking it in a hot garage for multiple months. I think you're assuming a trader is good natured while an eBay seller is ill natured while that's not the case at all. There's a mix of people on both but if the eBay seller is supplementing their income, they have just as much of an incentive to keep a good rep than the trader does who still wants to keep trading. A trader can go out with a bang and screw over a ton of people without repercussions outside of BA...an eBayer can't do that.

 

I'm got a bottle of Pliny from 2/8 that I will sell the OP for $15 -- total steal.