However you look at it, a shill bid is ultimately a fake bid, an unsubstantive bid, a bid where the shill bidder has no desire to win the item they are bidding upon.
Putting FMV and comps aside, this described bid encourages a genuine purchaser to ultimately bid more than they might otherwise have to bid, which ultimately provides more profit for the auction house.
Auctioneers that allow it may describe it as " a bid to protect a reserve " unknown or known, but I believe that it is very much a confidence trick, even when described in the t&cs.
T&cs can change at any time. Heritage have many revisions in 2013 2014 2015, also how many people read t&cs or check for revisions before they bid?
In the UK, most of Europe and most developed countries shill bidding is now Illegal.
On the largest online auction house in the world, ebay, it is now illegal.
There have been many succesful prosecutions folowing shill bids on ebay auctions in the US as elsewhere.
Also, in parts of the US ( eg Virginia ) unsubstantive bids can be disregarded and the final bidder is allowed to pay the amount of the previous genuine bid.
Unfortunately for (comic art) buyers, the US still has major auction houses in some jurisdictions that class unsubstantive bids as legal.
But there are many unsavoury scenarios/practices that used to be legal in the US, and elsewhere, that now thankfully, are not legal - take a moment to make a mental list of a few - let us hope that shill bidding in auctions follows suit.
I believe ONE important lesson that can be learned from this is that genuine bidders never leave a proxy bid / ceiling bid, on either an online site, or with a b&m auctioneer, where shill bidding, sometimes described as owner or representative bidding, is not distinctly declared illegal.
I would like to add that the ethics of this have gone well beyond Mike, who I genuinely believe was ignorant that what he has admitted to (bidding up to his undefined reserve) was wrong or would be so frowned upon by the majority of collectors.
If he or others bid upon his auctions to create an illusory fmv, that is a different matter.
We have seen mixed messages from Heritage, in that they have written unsubstantive bids are both allowed and not allowed !
It is time for those remaining auctioneers that allow unsubstantive bidding to cease this con trick.
It would be nice to see some fresh t&c revisions from Heritage dated February 2016
Following these threads it would be helpful if Heritage made a statement regarding unsubstantive bids before their next auction.