... Larry: >> A single "protection" bid BY THE SELLER, when it is apparent to other bidders that it is the seller bidding, is much more like a reserve than a shill. If it's not apparent, then it's a shill. If indeed our club auction permits shilling, then I am appalled. If a protection bid is to be allowed, it must be identified to other bidders as such. <<

The key being that the other bidders must KNOW that the protection bid is being allowed AND when it is being exercised.

Half right and half wrong on this one: >> As for your POINT, I think I wasted a lot of time trying to respond to your original post. I thought the issue was shilling and I brought up some ligitimate issues, but you were more motivated to steer the debate towards your predestined outcome than to respond to them. <<

Obviously, I WAS motivated to get to my point. However, you did raise some legitimate issues and helped broaden the scope of the thread (whether I intended it that way or not). Therefore, I don't think you wasted your time at all; rather, you forced even more critical thinking than I was looking for. (You -- we -- wasted a lot more time trying to teach people to count from 1 to 1000 than we did on this issue. <g>)

And, if nothing else, you helped make it clear that if we're just sitting around some time chatting during the convention, there are THREE things we shouldn't talk about: religion, politics and shill bidding!

----- jim o\-S