NavList:

The seller owes his fees to eBay, regardless of whether it sold or not.  So now the seller is invested in the process. 

Psychologically, buyers want to know that the item is going to sell and that they are bidding for "real".  Reserves indicate (to me) that the seller has an unrealistic price on the item, so I shouldn't waste my time.  Far better to set the minimum bid to your reserve and "let the item go"!  In this case, the seller may wish for a minimum of $800.  For buyers, this represents an attractive price for the unit.  It will encourage bids. So set the minimum bid (not the reserve) at that price.  It is effectively the same.

Consider the seller's alternative.  With a masked reserve, we don't know if his reserve is $80 or $8000; now I suddenly don't care.  The actual bidding reflected that.  Or I can poke around and discover that I have bid enough to meet his reserve but its too high.

In years past, you could retract a bid.  So to discover a reserve, you just bid $100000 then retracted it.  The reserve price is revealed at no risk.  eBay determined that this practice was not appropriate and discouraged buyers.  They have not halted the process.  To my knowledge, you can still do this.  Just don't abuse it!

Brad