The Debate: What’s wrong with selling Inauguration Tickets?

First, I would like to start off by congratulating Barack and all fellow Democrats.  This is a great time and I look forward to much change as I am sure everyone else does.  I feel it was an incredible campaign and I truly admire all the efforts and visions that went into it.  The way that everyone leveraged the modern day treasures like social networking, blogs and other online site and spaces for this campaign was truly incredible.

Now onto a topic that has me wondering: What’s wrong with selling Inauguration Tickets?

I have read many articles since the election results regarding the demand for tickets to the Inauguration.  The demand clearly outweights the supply for this event as this is going to be a truly historic event and will certainly be a huge part of our history.  There are going to be 240,000 tickets made available and will not be dispersed until close to the event to try to limit reselling.  My brokerage National Event Company sells event tickets to all sports concerts and theatre events and is not going to be reselling these but I still have to ask the question, What is wrong with reselling these tickets?

Every single person who would like to attend this event will not be able to get tickets.  it is physically impossible and will be an incredibly political procedure.  So if I am someone who was fortunate enough to obtain 4 tickets and only need 2, why can’t I resell them to someone who is so anxious to go, that they will pay money in exchange for the tickets.  The tickets have physically and legally become mine and as of last I checked, you can sell virtually anything in the US.  Some goods or services require a license or bond to do so, so why can’t this ticket be sold with a proper license?  Wasn’t this the point of popular sites like Ebay where you can go and resell anything that you don’t have a need for anymore?

If I win a Sony Playstation 3 for free in a contest before the item hits the retail market and people are selling these on Ebay for $1500 (although the msrp is only $399), what is the difference?  I never hear anyone complain about baseball cards, collector cars, houses, etc… being sold for fair market value.  Nobody is putting a gun to the the consumers head and making them purchase these items.  People simply want them bad enough because of some sort of internal or external variables that they are willing to spend up to a certain amount of money to obtain them.  That is the foundation of our great country.

I would be very interested in hearing some other opinions on this, please feel free to respond either agreeing or disagreeing.