"Making shopping exciting" promises the eBay ad campaign in Australia; for Daniel Lorello, selling is a bit too exciting this week, especially for such a history geek - I mean, history buff.

This week, those delighting in fringe news stories will surely enough bantering about the antics on one eBay ID'ed LLD1863 - Lorello to you and me - a New York State Archives employee of 29 years who decided he'd make a little cash on the side by selling the letters of former vice president John C. Calhoun, a rare Davy Crockett's Almanack and the like.

Credit for the discovery of theft was given to one Joseph Romito, a guy the New York Times describes as a guy who "trolled the Internet for artifacts related to the statesman John C. Calhoun, a 19th-century vice president." (Hey, state attorney general Andrew M. Cuomo called him a hero.)

"On Jan. 17," continues the NYT story (and you can just imagine writer Eric Konigsberg excitedly typing it in from his notes), "he happened to type the name into a search field on eBay, saw a listing for an obscure handwritten letter signed by Calhoun in 1823" and essentially the rest is instant history.

Lorello, who confessed to selling an estimated 400 items online in 2007 alone, now faces charges of grand larceny and fraud; the reason given for resorting to crime was a $10,000 credit card bill run up by his daughter.

(Sudden thought: If this were the 1823 of Calhoun's time, would Lorello have to duel somebody to the death?)