I really recommend against selling outside of your local area for Craigslist; the vast majority of people contacting you outside of your area are going to be scammers.
I did a posting on Craigslist recently, and I would say easily half of the people responding to my post were scammers. There are some obvious clues:
- being outside of your area
- lots of misspellings or grammar issues
- they don't actually mention your item in the email they send you. They'll just ask if the thing/item you listed is still available. If they don't actually use the word "coat" anywhere in the email, don't trust them.
- offering to pay more than the item is worth
One of the more common scams is detailed here:
http://www.intelliot.com/2009/10/cra...t-paypal-scam/
Basically, the scammers will offer to pay for the item, and ask you to ship it to them once they pay. Then you'll receive a very real looking email from Paypal -- but it's not actually from Paypal! The email will ask you to log in to verify the money, and send you to a site that looks like paypal, but isn't -- and of course, once you log in, they have your login and password.
I'm not exaggerating -- because the item I had listed on Craigslist was over $1000, I was receiving a TON of these kinds of emails. I had to read the responses I received very carefully.
Now to answer your original question -- Paypal itself is very safe, for both receiving and sending money. I use it all the time, and have for several years now. But you have to be smart about how you use it. And never EVER click on a link within an email that will supposedly take you to Paypal to login. Ever. EVER! Because 9 times out of 10, that is a phishing scam.