That's our good friend Dean again. I first complained about his "rare" auctions last October 15. Long before you got on your anti-rare crusade. See my post http://www.thechipboard.com/cgi-bin/tcb/archive3.pl?read=39334 in the archives. The only responses I got were that Dean Clark was "legit" and "above reproach." I tried again on November 6th with http://www.thechipboard.com/cgi-bin/tcb/archive4.pl?read=41067 and again no interest. I could find more. So I finally called some of my common LEs "rare" on eBay to see if I could get a friggin rise out of anyone.

You've certainly had more impact than me, but as long as the majority of the online chip community is willing to look the other way, newbies will continue to be tested. The only problem I have with your approach is you want to draw a hard line somewhere between "this chip never existed" and "we know it existed but nobody's ever seen one." At some level, rare is subjective. As regards Dean's common chips and others like him, I would think we could all agree they ain't rare and agree his advertising is dishonest. Instead you get everyone distracted over where to draw the line. Keep up the crusade, stay focused on the obvious stuff and just maybe someday Bob Orme will lerarn to count. Oh wait, that's another crusade <g>.