In the backend of virtuemart every time you login the default number of items (products,orders,etc) per page is set to 5 even if you increase the default items per page in the Joomla Global Configuration.
For VM2 the setting is in VM2 configuration - 'Templates' tab: "Set the pagination sequence for the List Box". See the tooltip there for a short explanation. Although it says "...on the frontend", it also affects the number of products shown by default in the backend.
Thanks that is a bit better, I would rather have the backend number much higher than the front end but at least I am getting more than 5 a page now.
Thanks for the info!