Definition
A puffer is a person secretly employed by the owner of property being sold at auction to place fictitious bids, thereby artificially inflating the price to the disadvantage of genuine bidders. The puffer does not intend to purchase the property; the bids are a device to drive up the price paid by legitimate buyers. The practice is a form of fraud upon the public bidders, and where proven, it entitles the deceived purchaser to void the sale at their option.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): One who puffs; a pufferfish; a manually-operated inhaler; a steam-powered train; an insulated jacket.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "One who puffs; one who praises with noisy or extravagant commendation. One who is employed by the owner or seller of goods sold at auction to bid up the price; a by-bidder."
Webster's 1913 captures both meanings in tandem, which signals how ordinary language once accommodated the legal sense more naturally than it does today. The legal meaning is now almost entirely absent from common usage. A modern reader encountering "puffer" in an old auction case or equity treatise would likely miss the fraud-specific meaning entirely without dictionary support.
Common Confusion
PUFFER vs. BY-BIDDER: These terms are used interchangeably in many historical sources, and Bouvier cross-references them directly. The distinction, where one is drawn, is minor: a by-bidder is the broader category (any shill bidder), while puffer carries the specific connotation of employment by the seller to run up the price artificially rather than to protect a reserve. Rapalje & Lawrence draws a further nuance between a bidder appointed as a protective reserve measure — arguably permissible in some older equity courts — and one deployed purely to "screw up the price," which was unambiguously fraudulent. In practice, researchers should treat both terms as referring to the same fraudulent mechanism and consult both headings in any historical source.
PUFFER vs. KNOCK-OUT: A knock-out is a collusive arrangement among bidders to suppress competition and later divide profits — the opposite directional manipulation from a puffer. Both are auction frauds, but the parties and mechanics differ. Conflating them in historical research leads to misreading the direction of the fraud and the identity of the injured party.
Why It Matters in Research
Puffer appears almost exclusively in equity and contract sources from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Researchers working in auction fraud, sale validity, or consumer protection history will encounter the term in chancery decisions and treatises on the law of vendors and purchasers. Several points warrant attention:
First, the remedy. Historical sources consistently frame the purchaser's right to void the sale as optional — the fraud operates at the election of the defrauded buyer, not automatically. This matters when tracing doctrinal lineage into modern voidable contract law.
Second, the one-puffer rule. Rapalje & Lawrence notes that a vendor could appoint only one puffer — a rule that reflects an older equity tolerance for protective reserve bidding that has largely disappeared from modern auction law. Researchers reading pre-twentieth century cases may encounter arguments that a single appointed puffer was permissible, a position almost universally rejected today.
Third, indexing inconsistency. Historical digests and reporters index auction-fraud cases under AUCTION, BIDDER, BY-BIDDER, PUFFER, and SALE interchangeably. A search confined to any one heading will miss significant material. Cross-reference all five headings when working in older reporters.
Fourth, modern survival. The term itself has largely fallen out of contemporary legal vocabulary, replaced by "shill bidding" in both legal and regulatory contexts. Online auction fraud statutes and consumer protection regulations use neither "puffer" nor "by-bidder." Researchers bridging historical doctrine and modern law must translate the vocabulary explicitly.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries are in close agreement on the core definition: a puffer is employed by the seller, attends the auction, and makes spurious bids to drive up the price. Bouvier is the most explicit on remedy, stating that the practice "at the option of the purchaser, invalidates the sale" and marshaling a string of citations in support. Black's (both editions) gives the leanest definition. Rapalje & Lawrence is the most analytically useful, distinguishing between protective and predatory puffing and noting the one-puffer limitation — a nuance absent from the other three sources.
All four sources treat puffing as unambiguously fraudulent in its typical form. None seriously entertains the permissibility argument, though Rapalje & Lawrence acknowledges it exists as a historical position. Bouvier's citation to Kent's Commentaries and several early American state decisions makes it the most useful starting point for tracing the doctrine through American equity courts. The reference to 3 Madd. 112 and other English chancery citations confirms the doctrine's English equity origins and points researchers toward the parallel English authority.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: the relationship between puffer doctrine and emerging statutory auction regulation, and the treatment of puffer bids in the context of reserve price disclosures. These questions arose later and must be traced through statutory sources and twentieth-century case law rather than through the dictionary shelf.
Jurisdictional Note
The legal treatment of puffing in auctions was broadly consistent across American equity courts in the nineteenth century, following English chancery precedent. Some early state decisions showed mild tolerance for single protective puffers, but this minority position did not survive into the twentieth century. Modern auction fraud is now primarily governed by state consumer protection statutes and, for online auctions, by federal wire fraud and FTC frameworks, none of which use the term "puffer."
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Auction; Fraud in the Formation of Contracts; Voidable Contracts.