As much as I complain about government control I keep thinking “what if the feds stepped in to stop the arguments about interstate shipping and taxes?” 2% federal tax on all purchases. Eliminate a quarter of the national debt while making the interstate commerce uniform and level. Then I wake up and realize some politician would raise the tax to 12% to pay for some earth saving project his state or party has come up with.
oops, sorry. Disregard anything that sounds political. ![[oops.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/1/1f129ddad071ffe5db6c99817c3cab666035a70a.gif "oops"){kind=small}
Why does this surprise anyone? He was unlicensed to sell wine and sold a lot of it in a controlling state.
I find the state selling the substance it’s supposed to regulate abhorrent but this case has nothing to do with that. The guy is a fool, maybe a happy fool but a fool.
We were in Philly for New Years and had to wait outside in the cold with dozens of other people for 20 minutes before we could go in and buy Champagne. And this was the second store we went to because we couldn’t believe the first one had a line. I was in retail for 20 years (mostly wine and liquor) and never saw anything like it
You mean NYE, the PLCB is a government agency and keeps government holidays, MLK, president’s day, etc. not to mention the usual holidays.
The state stores sell to restaurants too, but only liquor and wine (and without delivery), beer is a private system.
This is not “retail”…it’s a government “office” at work. You have to keep that in mind. They try to simulate “retail” or “wholesale”, but…they are unionized state employees running things. And, it’s NYE for them, too…
Interesting that the “rare wine” had an average value of about 60 bucks/btl.
That is a “rare” price in PA.
Technically, I detected sarcasm where there was none intended; so is that a separate award or just a subcategory?
I need a ruling from the judges.
Chris is right - no sarcasm intended.
Let me clarify my earlier post in that I’m not equating what this guy was doing to any of us selling a bottle on CC. From the story, it sounds like he was trying to run a small mail-order wine business from his house, including a mailing list of customers. But, it’s certainly the case that if we step outside the law, an outsider to this hobby could certainly look at many of our wine collections and believe we were doing the same.
It was also a slight joke about how small this operation was, given that many of us would exceed that level of stock strictly from our hobby. At an average price of $60/bottle, his collection was ultra-premium (kind of).
Legal or not, it’s absurd.
What’s “absurd”?
It must be terribly frustrating to a wine lover to live in Pennsylvania. Thank goodness North Carolina passed laws in the past decade to allow shipments direct from out-of-state wineries and is apparently not too concerned about retail shipments.
Bingo. Which is kind of the reason we HAVE the 2nd Amendment (note the no smiley face here).
Sucks to be in PA… I couldn’t agree more!!!
But I bet a private individual can sell firearms in PA. Not so for wines. He would’ve done better selling assault rifles at gunshows…
You still need a license and are required to collect sales tax.
Agreed. I wasn’t suggesting that what this guy did was legal, or that one could sell firearms without a proper license, collecting taxes, filing paperwork, etc. I was just commenting that there is an avenue for an individual, outside of a wholly owned and controlled state institution, to legally sell firearms. Not so for wine.
One can argue either way which presents a greater public health hazard. I’m not interested in hashing that out, but from where I’m sitting the relative ease with which a private individual can sell guns vs. alcohol in PA seems to correlate pretty well with the Constitutional guarantee in the second (right to bear arms) vs. twenty-first (no guaranteed rights, left up to the states) amendments.
EDITED TO ADD:
Hmm… I have to admit I don’t actually know the gun laws in PA. My comments are based on the assumption that they allow gun show sales and licensed dealers.
As much as I hate the state-run system in PA, I do think this guy was nabbed for basically running a pirate business out of his basement…and the subject happened to be wine. The guy didn’t seem to be doing it on an informal basis and knew what he was doing and the risks. I think the same thing would have happened to him in almost any state. Just in some other states, it might have been the tax authorities, not the liquor control authorities.
He certainly knowingly took a risk…and did it in a blatant manner, too, if some of his purported statements are accurate.