My only concern about the auction house is that it could easily make whoever is willing to pay real money the strongest. The devs have been against making it easy for people to buy their way to the top, and so hopefully they can figure out a way to make the auction house useful, but not "hey I'm rich, so I have all the best gear". It would also potentially make purple items less cool than they are, because you could use them for a few levels, then sell them without problem. This will lead to a flood of purples in the game and make grinding for loot less worthwhile. So, while I have concerns, I think if implemented correctly it would be cool.

I fully agree with you about the "Inspect" option! It should show ALL stats of the player and name of items they are using. It would be nice if it would let you click on each item to see just that item's stats too.