Why do pretty much all cell phones on ebay cost at least $10 to ship?

[ButterflyBlood]

I lost mine so I'm looking on ebay right now, and that seems to be the standard shipping price. Judging by how big they are I think it'd be only around $3 at most.

[amazona]

1. they're making money on the shipping

As a seller, you pay a percentage of the final bid back to Ebay but you don't have to pay a percentage of the shipping price. Therefore it is better to put as much of the price into the shipping and handling as you can possibly get away with. Many winning bids are actually at a price that would lose money for the seller if not for the shipping. Never bid without checking the shipping/handling price first -- which you are already doing, of course! Good luck, but honest bargains are hard to come by these days on Ebay because the rewards are small to nonexistent for the small seller.

[underpants]

2. It's a "You are starving the African continent with this purchase" tax

Coltan

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/nightline/DailyNews/coltan_explainer.html

[Archae]

3. Many times it's like this...

Some people buy a cell phone, get connected, decide for one reason or another to change services, so they get another cell phone from the other service, and so on.

So the phones themselves are rather inexpensive, but the person selling wants to make up the money in shipping it.

My former neighbor did that 3 times, and when she was moving, she asked me if I wanted to buy the three cell phones she had.
So I got 3 for $5, and kept the one that has me connected to US Cellular, and I've sold one already that is set up for another service, (forgot which,) and I still have a Nokia one from Cingular.