Shilling learn something everyday.

Ok for those of you that grew up under British currency this was ten cents.

But when Allen used it in his reference to the auction he is attending I had to look it up. Quiet interesting. I gathered from Allens post what he meant but was eager to know more about the practice. I just love all the old Yiddish expressions and this is one of them.

Take a look some might not be aware that there are several forms of shilling and engaging in them (which I believe some of our magazine tool reviewers do from time to time) is actually illegal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shill

It begs the question when is giving someone a testimonial legal and when is it illegal. Nice grey area here. Just like beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

as far as i know, when it comes to auctions, a shill is someone who is in cahoots with the auctioneers to drive up the price of an item. not by much, but just enough to nudge the price up higher.

Dan Noren said:

a shill is someone who is in cahoots with the auctioneers to drive up the price of an item. not by much, but just enough to nudge the price up higher.

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Dan, it depends on which side of the auction you are on, are you the bidder or the recipient of the money???
Also depends on the increments of the bids. .50 cent bids it might be tolerable, on large equipment at 100-500 dollar bid increments, a couple of nudges would be quite painful. Must be why it is illegal?

Ive deleted the post since I did post the auctioneer and Ive attended several of his auctions over the past uh...decade or so, maybe more, I didnt want the shilling to be associated with his auctions.
I went since it was him. I just wasnt happy with the prices they bid some wood up too. Not for me at least.

Ive been to insurance recovery auctions where it was downright outrageous, and I called the shill out, telling him Id sell him the product all he wanted, for 10% less then what he was paying.

shilling is popular in poker games, to drive up the pots.

Rob Keeble said:

Ok for those of you that grew up under British currency this was ten cents.

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Um, no. A shilling was 12 pence: 20 shillings to the pound, 240 pence to the pound.

(By coincidence(?), for many years the exchange rate was $2.40 to 1 pound...making a penny and a pence the same value.)

Sorry Lee you are correct about your version but where i lived it was ten cents when i knew it. We moved directly from pounds to metric and our exchange rate meant 10 cents. This was South Africa though.
Still went a lot further then but I was only buying ice creams in those days not machines.

allen levine said:

Ive deleted the post since I did post the auctioneer and Ive attended several of his auctions over the past uh...decade or so, maybe more, I didnt want the shilling to be associated with his auctions.
.

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Sorry Allen I did not mean to link shilling to his reputation. Pity you had to delet the post.

not a big deal at all, I think they were there to sell the machinery, thats where the big money must have been, the old wood was probably pennies for them. there had to be at least 30 machines. some the size of a pickup truck.