No Lou, in my opinion, what you are doing is not shill bidding and, in fact, is a perfectly respectable time-honored auction practice sometimes called "bottom feeding". There is no crime in looking for bargains at an auction.
Shill bidding involves using dummy bidders to bid on an item you own to falsely drive up the price.
Another ploy, employed by unscrupulous auction houses is called "chandelier bidding". Here, the auctioneer pretends to receive auction bids on an item the auction house itself owns-again to falsely increase the price.
All auctions have the possibility of mischief and outright fraud, both on the buyer and seller's part.
As I said in an earlier post, eBay, although it has its virtues, is an especially very dangerous venue for both buyer and seller.
George
George Hollenberg MD
Westport, CT, USA
> Regarding shill bidding, I suppose I could fit the loose
> definition of that
> on occasion. I see something that is going cheap and while I
> don't really
> need it, I'll bid to see if I can snatch a deal. Am I
> unnecessarily running up
> the bid? Probably? I do win a few items like that so it
> isn't like I'm
> doing it solely to help the seller. I do it at the Cirque
> auction for charity
> too. Doesn't bother me a bit if I end up with the item, even
> when it is
> something that I say to myself, "I can't believe I bought that".
> Plus, if I can
> force the competition to spend more of their precious dollars on
> items I don't
> want, then they won't have as much money to spend on items that
> I really
> want. That's part of the game, right?
>
> Lou Deeter, Orlando FL
>
>
> **************
> Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all
> time on AOL Music.
>
> (http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-
> grammy?NCID=aolcmp00300000002548)
>
> _______________________________________________
>
George Hollenberg MD
CT, USA