As a preface, I'm not a TFS admin, but I'm arguing with one.
Is there some set of privileges that will allow the behavior I've described in the title (or something similar)? I don't have access to a TFS instance with which I can experiment. I've read much of the on-line documentation but so far have not discovered an answer.
Project management has asked my admin to setup a very restrictive checkin policy, restricting actual check-in to a very few contributors. Those not in the select group get a 'Shelfset Not Created' error when attempting to create a shelfset. My hope is that there is some policy/privilege that can allow shelfsets to be created by any contributor.