Strange ways indeed (most peculiar markets)

Australia is not some banana republic backwater any more. We are a big fat rich nation of big rich fat people who will fork out $2000 for their kids to see Justin Bieber if they have to. But they don't have to – they choose to.

If you want a ticket to see Jerry Seinfeld's sold out show in Sydney it will cost you about $500 for a ticket that was bought by a scalper from Ticketek for $100.

While everyone bangs on about the unfairness of it all - am I the only one who wonders why the tickets are so cheap in the first place? $100 is four packs of cigarettes. It is two cases of beer or less than two tanks of petrol.

The actual market value of the ticket is $500.

Imagine a car dealer inexplicably selling you a new car for $6000 that is for sale at the dealership down the road for $30,000. Wouldn't you stop and think that something was a little odd about that? (Then Nick Xenophon comes along and yells, STOP THIEF!! when you try to re-sell the car for what it's actually market value.)

Inexplicable also is how Tiketek chooses to allow this kind of scalping when it clearly doesn't have to. Tickets to my local festival Splendour in the Grass are not scalped despite overwhelming demand for tickets means they sell out in 12 hours or less. Their agent Moshtix simply does not allow direct re-sale of the tickets. Each ticket is booked in a person's name and address which cannot be changed. Unwanted tickets can only be sold back to Moshtix minus a fee of $20.

For the same reason Jetstar air tickets are not scalped - despite that they release small quantities of tickets at very low prices from time to time. Jetstar uses the same “paperless” ticket as Moshtix but allows you to change the name of the passenger. There are deadlines for name changes though and the fee they charge will negate much of the profit from scalping. Their tickets are not refundable. And as Jetstar handle the changes they will know what you are doing and can easily shut you down and bar you from flying with them – forever.

So why does Tiketek choose to do business in this way? Why don't they just sell the tickets for what the market will pay? (These questions are not rhetorical, by the way, if you can answer either of them please do).

But the cat is now out of the bag and we all know what riches await us if we can just get out hands on one of these golden tickets. If Nick Xenophon were to get rid of those damn ticket bots then you and I could become home-grown scalpists. Even if I'm limited to purchasing only four tickets per show, by investing $400 I can make a profit of $1600 - then I'm in and you should be too.

'Cause you're free to do what you want (any old time).