Selling on eBay

It has been a while since I have sold something on eBay. I used to do it every now and again, but I can't remember the last time now. Recently we have been cleaning out our house and I found a few things that we didn't need, but would be good candidates to sell on eBay.

I posted the stuff on eBay's site and let it go for the duration of the auction. Once the auction was over I received the PayPal payments from the winning bidders, now is time to ship! But, wait. There is a hold on my PayPal account for 21 days until the bidders leave me feedback. WTF? I have been an eBay member for 10 years, they should now me by now. Anyway, I can deal with that.

I decided to let the local UPS Store pack and ship the items. To me it seemed worth it to let them pack everything up and take care of the shipping. But, boy, this comes at a price. For one of the items I sold, the shipping was over $80, and another one was $50. Yikes! What I don't understand is that the shipping is so expensive, but I couldn't charge those kinds of prices for my auction item shipping. Even if I sent this through the US Postal Service it still would have been a lot to ship, plus I would have to find my own boxes and packing gear.

My question is this - with all the "eBayers" out there, what is the best way to maximize your return, but not spend all day packing up and shipping the gear you sold?