@my*mum wrote:
When I buy and sell a business, often it it the trading name and the associated goodwill that is what is being sold. The actual premises and stock are kind of an added bonus.
For me, personally, that is one of the key areas where an eBay ID with a store / established business is different to a B&M outlet or even say something like a specific product (thinking in terms of things like long-established products and brand names being sold, eg Kraft Vegemite etc, where in those circumstances the product itself carries a specific reputation and history).
In some ways an eBay ID could be considered a 'product' that can be qualified by the quality of the seller, but I don't see it as interchangeable in quite the same way, and the consumer protections necessary for online trade aren't the same as real world B&M trade. The reputation of an established ID, as opposed to anything else associated with a store name, is of more significance when people make a purchase decision.
I understand that with an eBay store, the actual staff running the show can be interchangeable, and perhaps a business can go through periods of having great staff and not so great staff, all of which would affect the ID's rep, and that a registered business can change hands and new staff can come on board and start running the show, but I don't see that as entirely the same thing as selling the ID to a new, different party - maybe that doesn't make sense to anyone else, but it does in my head! 
My personal opinions on the topic are also coloured with my own business in mind - if I sold it, the buyer would get my stock, my brand name and my designs, and if I had an established independent site, they'd get that (because that's essentially just a URL), but they wouldn't get my eBay store ID to trade with, whether it was possible or not.
