Do eBay still allow sellers to manually mark listings as paid e.g. if payment was by cheque?

No, I don't think so - payment goes through eBay 100% of the time now.

Urulókë wrote:

No, I don't think so - payment goes through eBay 100% of the time now.

Yeah, I think it all proxies through them now, so there is now risk of them not getting their bite of the cherry.

I get it and understand concerns
Personally I have sold and brought a shed load of stuff on eBay and use PayPal via bank with no problems at all. In fact if you play by the rules PayPal has actually backed me numerous times on disputes.
Taking the right precautions is key though
As you say Stu using a credit card or any other method just doesn’t work once you receive larger sums with no requirement to buy
The latest changes will put a few people off I am sure but I suspect not that many.
Ironically my selling days are over now so just buying lol ?

It'll scare off all the wee guys though. And that's where we all get our book bargains.

Do you think more Tolkien sellers will switch from eBay to Abebooks??

Certainly not the occasional/one-off sellers. Abebooks charges a minimum of $25 USD per month just to have a seller's account even if you have no items listed, plus fees for each sale that are about the same as what eBay charges (8% - 14% for Abebooks, 12% for eBay books category).

Oh wow, did not know about the monthly fee. Good to know!

What's the issue with connecting a bank account? If you have concerns, could you not just set up an additional account purely for ebay and transfer out any funds as they come in?

Deagol wrote:

What's the issue with connecting a bank account? If you have concerns, could you not just set up an additional account purely for ebay and transfer out any funds as they come in?

It would have to be at a separate bank, to have a level of protection from eBay. By linking eBay to your bank, they can pull funds whenever they feel like (if account A at your bank gets overdrafted, your bank will automatically pull from account B to cover it). Also, by linking eBay to your bank account, they can put a freeze on it as well if their fraud detection software gets triggered - your bank will typically freeze all of your accounts access when this happens.

Paypal, Venmo, Facebook payments, etc. all work this way. For me personally, having a credit card company in between with well regulated consumer protection laws, is how I interact with these companies. When I was selling more regularly (with an Abebooks account, for example), I had a business checking account at a different bank from any personal accounts that I had.