Whilst studying for my graduate degree in Economics, I was taught that 
"in the old days" people would put gold or silver coins in bags and 
shake them vigorously, causing metal dust to come off and collect in the 
bag. There wouldn't be very much dust per coin but it would add up. In 
this manner, the value of money could be extended, so to speak. 
Supposedly monarchs would employ people to do this as their occupation; 
these people were "shills". The collected bits were the basis of the 
word "shilling" for a small-value coin.

To prevent this from being done excessively, coins often have ridges 
along the edge of their circumferences (take a look at a US quarter). If 
too much "shilling" has been done, the metal-value of the coin has been 
significantly diminished and the coin is no longer worth the face value. 
The lack of ridges is evidence of that.

The carry-over from this in popular slang is that a "shill" gets extra 
value out of a crowd beyond the "face value".

In one sense, honey bees have "shills", for example bees that "buzz" 
idle forager bees to get them to go back to work.

Randall Austin

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