Good Morning Nitro Bob! I Slept like a baby. Cried all night and wet myself. Thanks to all who have welcomed me from within this thread, or by personal email.

Be Specific? Sure. What I said was that AUCTION discussion forums, rather than COLLECTIBLE discussion forums, do not allow an auction seller or buyer to be discussed behind their backs. Big difference between slandering someone's taste or vocabulary and slandering his business practices. All these dot.com's; AuctionTalk, AuctionWatch, AuctionRover, AuctionDiner, Online Auction Users Association, and The Auction Guild have similar policies. Specific enough? Discuss whatever you want in general terms, but do not link to a specific auction, or mention a seller or buyer by name, unless that person has been notified of the discussion and has been 24 hours to make an appearance. This is true of closed auctions as well as current auctions.

Like I said, the reason for this is partly legal and partly moral. Something about "bearing false witness", or "doing unto others" ........ By the way, there's been a big discussion of possible fraud on the part of some guy called NitroBob going on for a week at www.AuctionBS.com, and hundreds or thousands of people are reading it. Wouldn't you be upset if this was true? Be honest.

You also said this forum is unmoderated. What? You mean if I want to start posting links to kiddie donkey porn, or run a D.O.S. attack on the board, no one has the power to stop me? Of course this board is moderated.

I was thinking about how we could disagree so strongly about such a fundamental issue, and realized that we might be talking apples and oranges in a couple of different ways.

I do not consider myself a "chipper", but an antique dealer. In that sense, the word "rare" refers to availability more than overall scarcity. For example: Someone who's name rhymes with, say, spaghetti, buys the entire chip inventory of a defunct poker card room in AnyTown USA. There are 10,000 chips. He gives sets of 200 chips as gifts to 5 of his fellow collectors, and puts the remaining 9,000 chips into his personal collection/museum. None of these chips will reach the marketplace in the forseeable future. Then, I meet a woman, a former cocktail waitress at the card club, who gives me three chips she found at the bottom of her purse.

Is this then a "rare" chip? You would probably say, "No, there are 10,000 of these around, it's a common chip". From a theoretical standpoint, or from a "numismatic" standpoint, I agree with you.

However, as an antique dealer and poker chip auctioneer, I would say, regardless of how many were made, if there are only one or two available for purchase, from me or from anyone else, it's a "rare" chip.

My auctions are for your average collector who does not belong to any clique, club, or swap party. They just buy chips on eBay. That's who I'm addressing with my auction descriptions, not you guys. My collectors mostly have the same goal as I do, to get one of each antqiue chip design, or perhaps a 3-color set. It doesn't matter to me or to them how many were originally made, or how many different collectors have an example of the chip design. All that matters is that they do not have one, and are not likely to see one again in the forseeable future if they pass on my auction.

By the way, my average customer has been collecting antique chips for less than 6 months, so what may have been readily avalilable a year ago is irrelevant to them.

Now, I have already stated that I was completely unaware of any auctions for single chips of this design on eBay, either prior to mine, concurrent with, or upcoming. I agree that if I knew that this chip was readily available to my customers through other auctioneers, my use of the word would be at least "bad faith", and possibly an outright misrepresentation. But this was not the case, and I'm still unable to find any such auctions in the eBay database. I trust you guys when you say these chips have been offered on eBay as singles, but suggesting that my auction fell under the catagory of "Secrets and Lies" is insulting.

Bob, I also thank you for your comment "Listing the item as a poker chip has probably cost you more sales than you know". And from what level of experience in online auctioneerng do you speak?

I assure you I know exactly what I'm doing when I list my items, and how to reach my market. The keywords I use, and the keywords I DON'T use are carefully crafted to bring my auctions in front of the type of collector that I have determined is my target market. Funny that you would feel you know better then me how to conduct my business.

See you all at the show .....