Can someone explain what shill bidding is please?

niceshoes_2

What is shill bidding - I keep seeing it mentioned but don't know what it is, sorry!

ben500

Shill bidding is when you or a cohort bid on your own auction in order to raise the price artificially which effectively means the buyer is bidding against the seller, who will win in this situation it will never be the buyer but sometimes the shiller can lose out by winning their own auction through greed and accruing final fees.

HTH

niceshoes_2

Aah, I see now, thanks for pointing that out to me.

[Deleted User]

Thsnk you.

I was wondering also!

Jellicle

From Wikipedia, the free (online) encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/

"A shill is an associate of a person selling a good or service, who pretends no association and assumes the air of an enthusiastic customer. The intention of the shill is, using crowd psychology, to encourage other potential customers, unaware of the set-up, to purchase said good or service.

Usually, shills are employed by confidence artists. Their use is often illegal, though this varies as the precise definition of what comprises "shilling" is debatable.

The word "shill" is probably related to "shillaber", a word of obscure early-20th century origin with the same meaning."

Bossyboots

Deleted_User wrote:

Thsnk you.

I was wondering also!

So was I. Thanks to the OP for being the one to raise it and to the others for replying.

rizla01

It's a process that enables the seller to get top money for an article that he is selling. :j

Terrible crime really!! :eek: :eek: :eek:

It is actually a practice that has taken place in auction houses for centuries and STILL does.

Even an auctioneer will take a bid 'Off the wall' which means that he manufactures a bidder.

Mr_Proctalgia

This is something that I am struggling to get my head around, firstly I fully understand what shilling is, but in a real life (actual) auction The guy with the hammer is legally allowed to take bids "off the wall" or "off the chandelier" (If south of Watford) up to and equal to the sellers reserve. This was enshrined hundreds of years ago - I often see it in property auctions where - for instance you "happen to know the reserve price" So I stick my hand up and bid the actual reserve and the auctioneer is left with nothing to say - very dangerous manoeuvre if you end up buying a pig in a poke BTW. But if you do a few real auctions the body language usually tells you when the reserve has been passed.