I don't know if I'd say that it's "justified" and I understand your concerns. But it's the way things are and you pay a price for the massive market eBay supplies and the convenience of getting payments through PayPal. And by the way, the 9% fee only goes for ebay.co.uk users, NOT ebay.com. Yet, that is.
OK it sold for $5260.
If an item on ebay.com sells for over $1000.01, then the fees to be paid are:
5.25% of the initial $25.00 ($1.31) plus
3.25% of the initial $25.01 - $1,000.00 ($31.69) and
1.50% of the remaining closing value balance $1,000.01 - $5,260.00 ($63.90)
That's a total fee of $96.90. Not too bad really, the seller still gets $5163 (about £2575) a pretty decent amount of money to earn for this 45 as I'm sure most will agree.
If the seller gets paid via PayPal there ofcourse goes another 4% ($210) out the window. But seeing as PayPal, Postal Money Order, BidPay and straight credit card payments directly to the seller are the accepted forms of payment I'm sure that won't be the scenario.
Still, if a PayPal payment is made, the massive $306.90 in fees still leaves the seller with $4,953.10 (about £2450) in their pocket. It would be hard to sell that record for that sort of money anywhere else in the world right now.