David Spates "Therefore I Am" Published Oct. 1, 2002

Why is scalping
illegal in some states?

Buy low, sell high. If you want to make a buck on your investment, just follow that premise. It'll work every time.

Well, strike that. It doesn't work every time -- not when it comes to tickets. It works in Tennessee, but there are plenty of other states where it's a no-no. In Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, Ohio, Rhode Island and Wisconsin, you're breaking the law if you sell your event tickets for more than face value. We Tennesseans don't care.

You can buy low and sell high all day long here in the Volunteer State. Doesn't that seem odd to you? Can you name another legal product on which you're not allowed to make a profit? How did concert tickets and sports tickets earn an exemption from the capitalistic rule of thumb?

I think I may know why. It's because of the unfortunate name assigned to people who sell tickets for profit, "scalpers." Frightful name, isn't it? Scalper. "Run! Here comes a scalper!" It sounds like a horror movie. I'm sure the other kind of scalping happened in days gone by, but probably not to the extent that we have come to believe via a steady stream of Hollywood Westerns.

Regardless of historical accuracy, scalping is a pretty gruesome thought.

I'm sure it was easy for state legislators to get behind a measure to curb scalpers' activities. Whatever scalpers are doing must be bad, right? A scalper could volunteer his weekends cooking meals for the homeless and painting orphans' homes and still be considered a bad guy - he's a scalper, after all. Scalpers had to be stopped, so laws were passed.

But why is scalping illegal in those states? How are sports tickets different from, say, Beanie Babies? The whole basis of the Beanie Babies market is that a retailer sells the Beanies for a set price dictated by the manufacturer. A person who buys the dolls from an authorized retailer is then free to sell the Beanie Babies for whatever price he can get. In their heyday, some of the rarest Beanie Babies were selling for thousands of dollars on the secondary markets. Why isn't this looked upon as Beanie scalping?

It's all perception. I guarantee that if Beanie Babies dealers were called scalpers there would have been laws passed.

Can't we apply the same logic to baseball cards? Why is it legal to buy a $1.99 pack of baseball cards which may or may not contain a valuable, collectible single card and then turn around and sell that collectible card on the secondary market for $70? How is that not scalping?

Isn't scalping everywhere? Are art dealers not scalpers? They buy low and sell high. What about used car sellers? Are they scalpers, too? They buy cars from people and then sell them for a profit. The car maker isn't getting a cut of that secondary deal any more than a musician or a sports team is getting a piece of the scalpers' profit. The car maker made its profit when it sold the car the first time, and likewise the musician or sports team made its profit when it sold the ticket to the scalper. After that initial deal is done, why does the car maker or musician or sports team deserve another share of the profit?

That being said, I'm not a big fan of scalpers. I've been to many a concert and sporting event
at which my seats weren't nearly as good as those being sold by scalpers. I bought my tickets, and they bought theirs. I decided to keep my tickets, and they decided to sell theirs. If I didn't want my seats and sold my tickets, where's the harm? The sports team or musician is getting paid (paid quite handsomely, I might add) regardless if I scalp my tickets. The biggest reason I don't like scalpers is, well, they seem to always have better seats than I do. It's jealousy on my part more than anything else.

Truth be told, I guess I'm a scalper, too. I've sold tickets for more than face value. For instance,

I sold an extra ticket to the Virginia Tech vs. LSU football game earlier this season. My wife couldn't attend, so I was sitting on an extra ticket. It was a big game, so tickets were a hot commodity. What was I supposed to do? Ignore the profit potential? Heck no, boy! I put that sucker on eBay and sold a $31 ticket for $115. The seller (me) was happy with the deal, and the buyer (some Hokie from Maryland) was happy with the deal, so where's the harm? It's not like I sold him a gram of heroine, it's a football ticket -- a legally produced, legally sold and legally purchased product. Who was the victim in that scenario? The only victim I saw that day was LSU.

If you want to call me a scalper then so be it. In any other transaction, I'd be called a capitalist.

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David Spates is a Knoxville resident and Crossville Chronicle contributor whose column is published each Tuesday. He can be reached at davespates@chartertn.net.