[Avodah] Selling open boxes

[Zev Sero]

Micha Berger wrote:
> On Mon, April 20, 2009 11:55 am, Liron Kopinsky wrote:
> : Similarly, selling half a box of cheerios may not be worth exactly
> : half of the original purchase price, but I see no reason why someone
> : couldn't buy it if they so desired.
> 
> Don't you think we've descended well into asmachta / haaramah when we
> discuss a family going away to a hotel for Yom Tov, and selling open
> package after open package?
> 
> It's one thing to throw in a bad element in a large deal -- you get
> all this stuff, if you take that half a box of cereal that my children
> rifled through too. It's another when speaking of dozens of half-used
> packages, that while they *could* buy if they so desired, they aren't
> plausibly likely to desire it.

I don't follow this whole line of argument at all.  The buyer plainly
*does* want the goods, vehora'ayoh, he's agreed to buy them at their
market value.  In the case of opened packages, that value is very low.
He's certainly not willing to overpay for them, but at their proper
value why should he not want them, every bit as much as he wants the
rest of the stuff?

We are not mindreaders, and it's no concern of ours *why* he wants
the chametz, just that he does.  For all we care he intends to collect
the lot and set it on fire, or ship it to Africa to feed the starving
children his mother would tell him about.  But in fact we know perfectly
well what he intends to do with all the chametz: he's buying it all with
the intent of flipping it for a profit.  He's hoping to find a buyer who
will take the whole lot off his hands in one easy transaction, and save
him the trouble of going around collecting it from the various addresses
where it's stored.  That would make his deal rather like those people
a few years ago who used to buy properties and flip them before the
original owners had even had a chance to move out.  Perhaps such a buyer
can be found among the owners of dollar store chains; that's none of his
concern, any more than his intentions are any of ours.  But he's fairly
confident that one way or another, within 8 days such a buyer will be
found.

I don't see how any of this is in any way less than 100% legitimate.

-- 
Zev Sero                      The trouble with socialism is that you
zev at sero.name                 eventually run out of other people’s money
                                                     - Margaret Thatcher