Hi Don and welcome to the forum,
In regards to your eBay/Labs question, eBay is a very complex market to work in and can be extremely hard to understand for new inexperienced sellers. The first thing to really come to terms with in regards to eBay is that it's more of a wholesale market, rather than a retail market, as many new sellers believe it to be.
What I mean by "wholesale market" is that the majority of prices you will find on eBay are marked at wholesale, not at retail. This happens for various reasons. I'll run through some of the main ones below.
Competition: When we're talking about eBay, especially eBay USA, then we're talking about one of the most competitive online markets in the world and that's down to drop-shipping mostly. The vast majority of drop-shippers in the world, no matter where they live, will be selling on eBay USA.
The huge market potential draws sellers to it and of course, drop-shipping makes it easy for anyone, anywhere to access that market.
So now you have a marketplace full of drop-shippers from all over the planet all selling pretty much the same things and of course, all competing against each other in the process. Competition on that size scale has the effect of pushing profits to an absolute minimum as sellers get more desperate to make sales.
You also have to look at where drop-shippers are located as well, for example, someone living in India (for example) may accept making as little as 0.50cents profit on an item to get the sale. Now, most would consider 0.50 cents as not worth the effort, but remember, in India that 0.50 cents USD holds a lot more value than it does in the USA itself.
So you have multiple market factors affecting that eBay market just considering Drop-Shipping alone.
Now add to that mix, large volume sellers. Those cashed up enough to be able to either buy in wholesale volume (which of course, provide better prices than Drop-Shipping) Some may even be buying directly from manufacturers and then you also have actual wholesalers and manufacturers themselves using eBay as their own sales platform, squeezing out any middlemen and selling direct to the public at wholesale price.
So now you have even more market price compression, but it doesn't end there.
Now you also have sellers using marketing techniques such as loss-leading (selling products at cost or below) in an effort to get the sale and then use those sales to market their own website for future sales potential, so in essence, using eBay as a market tool to promote their own website.
Now, believe it or not, that's really only scratching the surface as to how complex the market is on eBay and just how difficult it is to get a foothold, most especially with Drop-Shipping.
Can it be done?
Absolutely, but it takes a lot of research and the areas you will usually find best for Drop-Shipping tend to be the slower moving markets. I see a lot of new sellers wanting to get into the market by Drop-Shipping the hottest selling items, but what they don't understand is that the hottest selling markets are full of the big chased up sellers who buy in large volume, then cut their margins to sell cheap and dominate those markets, leaving no space for Drop-Shippers to breath.
So yes, eBay can be used for Drop-Shipping, but it's important to understand the market your dealing in and all of the forces at play and then anyone who is ultimately successful will usually spend many, many weeks and months researching.
So this isn't just a walk up and start type of business, takes a lot of understanding, a lot of research and a whole lot of graft. If you're prepared for all those three things, then you give yourself the very best chance of ultimate long-term success.
I hope that gives you some insight into how the eBay market forces effect prices and why many prices on eBay are already lower than many supplier's Drop-Ship prices.
You also have to bear in mind that while eBay is certainly popular with online sellers, there are still many other avenues outside of eBay and online in general that suppliers service. For example, storefronts, markets and so on, so not every supplier is going to be able to give you prices to compete on an eBay, especially with Drop-Shipping, which already have very small margins for the most part.
Cheers