Is Something Weird Going On Here?

Leroy Van Allen and A. George Mallis, in a monumental work of anality, identified and categorized every die variety of Morgan dollar (or so they thought at the time). Each individual variety is called a VAM, in their honor. So, in a sense, every single Morgan is a VAM. Every one has a VAM number.

Some are more rare/interesting/popular than others, which is why people like me exist to collect them.

New varieties are being discovered to this day. Although Mr. Mallis has passed on, Leroy Van Allen is still inspecting and attributing VAM's, and is the only person who can actually "declare" a new VAM. There are now over 4,000.

Impressive? To me, yes. Now, consider: they did the same thing with Peace dollars, too. Peace dollar varieties are described with VAM numbers.

"Shill Bidding is bidding that artificially increases an item's price or apparent desirability, or bidding by individuals with a level of access to the seller's item information not available to the general Community. Shill Bidding is prohibited on ebay."

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Originally posted by mishap-coins

I am curious how is all this info going to help ?



http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI...._DetailsLink

Bidder Information

Bidder 3
Feedback: 10 to 49 • 100% Positive
Registered on ebay: 90 days or less
Bids on this item: 3

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Bid activity % with this seller, bids to unique sellers and bids in unique categories (to a lesser degree) will be excellent indicators of who *isn't* a shill. That, and the pattern of escalating bids on the part of the bidder remains, regardless of whether he's named or not. Seeing it in implementation, I'm much more confident in ebay having done this one right. These statistics would have immediately nailed a typical shill before now, and have, except we needed to pore through auction archives to find them.

Shilling will still be possible, but it would require collusion on the part of more than one seller to dilute the same-seller statistic, and a whole lot of effort to create a varied-looking shill account. I've no doubt it will happen, but I'm thinking that only the crooked sellers we already know would have the time and incentive to do it.

The categories I mention didn't appear in your quote, mishap - were you not logged in at ebay? Can you see the statistics I mentioned?

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Originally posted by tights24

"Shill Bidding is bidding that artificially increases an item's price or apparent desirability, or bidding by individuals with a level of access to the seller's item information not available to the general Community. Shill Bidding is prohibited on ebay."

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So Shill Bidding is like having your friends bid on your item so it increases in price and seems more desirable?

Check this out, it's the strangest feedback stats I've ever seen:
http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISA...eedback:2:us

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Feedback Score: 60
Positive Feedback: 96.9%
Members who left a positive: 62
Members who left a negative: 2
All positive feedback received: 935

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Shill bidder or loyal customer?

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Originally posted by SuperDave

Leroy Van Allen and A. George Mallis, in a monumental work of anality...

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Thanks SuperDave, that phrase is golden!
And it probably applies to most of the other die marriage attributions out there!