Science News has an article about the Ebay auction of an Erdos number (as an opportunity to collaborate with the offeror on a joint paper). http://sciencenews.org/articles/20040612/bob8.asp The auction was won with a last minute bid of $1031, by a person who wanted to spoil the auction. The offeror is trying to set up more collaborations between amateur mathematicians. Rich rcs@cs.arizona.edu