The standard measure of damages in contract is expectancy, that is the breaching party has to put the non-breaching party in as good a position as he would have been had he not breached.
Had the seller not breached the buyer would have had tickets with a fair market value of $6000 (at the time of breach) and been out the $900 he paid for the tickets. After the breach the buyer got back the $900, but is still $5100 worse off than if the seller had fulfilled his part of the bargain. Those are the expectancy damages he suffered.
Given that going to this specific game is a unique experience that can't be duplicated a court could order specific performance (i.e. that the tickets be handed over) as tacon suggests below. But: 1) I don't think small claims courts can order specific performance, 2) you probably couldn't get before a small claims court judge in time, and 3) if the seller didn't actually have the ticket then he couldn't be ordered to turn it over. So monetary damages are more likely.
I guess I don't really follow why the buyer is entitled to appreciation on something that was never in their possession.
If the tickets had instead declined in value before the seller backed out then wouldn't the buyer still get back all their money? I assume it would be unacceptable to refund them just the then-current FMV, so why is it different when the tickets appreciate in value?
The buyer owns the tickets from the moment the purchase is complete, whether or not he has received them.
If the tickets went down in value in the interim time, then the most expedient thing for the seller to do to cure the problem would be to buy new tickets at the now-reduced price and hand them over to the buyer. You are absolutely right, the buyer can't demand his money back if the tickets go down in value -- he has to accept tickets that are fundamentally the same in value as the ones he was supposed to get.
Now, if for whatever reason the seller couldn't replace the tickets even though the price has dropped (unlikely -- that's pretty much the definition of a price, is that the item is available in exchange for money), then he might be able to ask for his money back instead.
Obviously they could try a cause of action for lost opportunity to profit from the transaction from legal standpoint, but it's much harder to claim losses from hypothetical things that never happened than to unwind an actual transaction.
What if Kobe was injured and the price of the tickets plummeted for example? It's a stretch to argue that the buyer lost something tangible by relying on the sellers performance of the contract.
On the other hand, listing a product for fair market value and then cancelling when the market value skyrockets after the sale is not at all reasonable behavior. I assume there's some part of contract law that covers this sort of thing (since a sale is a form of contract).
I'm not sure how this is logistically possible without the seller sending SH tickets when he or she wants to sell them, in which case we'd just be reading an article about how SH accidentally sent out $6k in tickets that were never paid for.
It sounds like there are some ticket issuers which make this impossible, but I don't see how giving tickets to SH makes any difference.
I see no reason StubHub couldn't do this, of course. They could even spin it as a feature: the seller never learns your address and your privacy is protected!
For electronic tickets, whatever service sells the ticket could act as the trusted third party. Get the seller to provide whatever confirmation/order/transfer numbers are appropriate and check them with the ticket issuer's system.
You're right, for paper tickets there needs to
be a trusted third party that handles them
For events that Stubhub lacks hooks into the ticketing system (mostly baseball), they do nothing to vet tickets. Buyers are advised to create a listing in TicketExchange (or whomever is the official marketplace) to (1) validate the tickets and (2) lock them to prevent forwarding or TicketExchange sale by a prior holder.
I think Stubhub has non-delivery penalties, but probably not enough to cancel out this windfall.
In this case, though, it was a month later and they still hadn't been delivered. That's no longer reasonable.
It's possible the ticket issuers won't issue tickets even in that timeframe. StubHub's web site has warnings that the tickets might not be available until 72 hours before the event. In which case they either need to forbid reselling such tickets, or have massive penalties for breaking the contract.
I imagine for some events there is this entire chain of sell/buy/sell/buy going on.
Or, try to. Stubhub actually has a huge fraud exposure. The seller is paid within days of the buyer receiving the tickets, even if the event is much later.
If the tickets were counterfeit in the first place, or invalidated later, Stubhub can only hope that the credit card the seller signed up with is still valid... or ever was. Meanwhile, the buyer gets a refund (eventually) or a substitute (if prices have dropped).
Sure they do, just don't release funds until the tracking number shows the tickets have been delivered or the PDF has been uploaded.
But having a ticket doesn't mean that it will be valid at the gate... or was ever valid.
StubHub fully supports digital tickets that are immediately delivered upon purchase. They should, IMHO, require this when it's available.