20.4 Southeby’s and Christie’s are the two largest upscale auction houses. Both enjoyed a growing business in the boom years of the late 1990s. In 2000, both firms were accused of price fixing. The Sherman Antitrust Act was passed in 1890 to control the power of trusts and monopolists. In 1995, both firms announced they would charge a fixed, nonnegotiable sliding-scale commission on the sales price. Is this the age-old tactic of price fixing? What constitutes legal pricing policies versus illegal price fixing?