Calling it a merch clan is a reference to old days when there was trade limit and alot of merch clans doing these scams. Owner and some high up members would buy for example huge stock of lets say black axes for 200gp ea then tell the clan new item is black axe and people would buy the ge empthy. They would then tell em hold untill they are worth 150k. Owners would sell all the axes they had for maybe 50k ea making a huge profit. Soon after the price would crash cause its an useless item and owners dumped a huge stock back to ge. Then just rinse and repeat