You used to have to pay a listing fee based on your starting price. The higher the starting price, the greater the fee. That would encourage sellers to start lower (no fee for $0.99 as I recall), more items would sell (who wouldn’t bid $0.99 for a nice item?), and eBay makes more on completed sales.

But, sellers wouldn’t want to get stuck selling something super cheap, so they’d pay a small fee to have a reserve. It’s like insurance in blackjack. If you’ve got a decent hand and a lot of money on the table, sometimes it’s worthwhile.

These days, I just message the seller and ask what the reserve price is and if it’s too high, I make them an offer in my message so they can SEND me an offer if they’re not getting any bids and want to sell at my offered price.