The $4 baby shoes leave China with "Economy Shipping", which is the cheapest service, and costs less than eBay's creation, the ePacket.
This free-shipping seller wants two dollars more to ship by ePacket, higher than others.
Even at the four-dollar level, seller like this one use the ePacket postal service which eBay got set up by driving negotiations and government policy at the Postal Service. However, ePackets -- full first-class American service, including scanning, tracking and delivery confirmation -- are not seller's dominant choice for items under five dollars.
Here's a window into another world. When you ramp up a new battery line in a production facility, the first cylindrical cells ("rechargeable batteries") may fail quality control for your buyer and have to be sold as NoNames. The plain wrapper on a no-name battery is a length of heat-shrink tubing, shrunk down over the cell (photo). When you shut down a factory, what do you do with the leftovers? Sell them on eBay -- it's cheaper than paying for garbage collection.
Other items from this seller mix consumer items with bits and pieces used to manufacture them.
