Elton John Will Not Accept PayPal

You can buy a lot of effed-up things on eBay, from David Coverdale picture-disc clocks to Joe Namath biker movies to a complete season of Mama’s Family; heck, you can even buy a six-figure Velvet Underground acetate, and then never pay for it. But the one thing the online auctioneer won’t let you buy, apparently, is tickets to next summer’s Elton John-led concert for Princess Diana:

The first Concert for Diana tickets have appeared on eBay, priced at up to £300 per pair. But the internet auction site has banned them from sale “out of respect” for the late Princess’s memory. It is pulling the listings and contacting vendors to explain that the tickets cannot be re-sold on eBay. One pair of tickets to the concert drew 19 bids in just over an hour.

The auction site has placed a message on its internal community page, saying: “In view of the unique and commemorative nature of the Concert for Diana event and as a mark of respect for the memory of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, we’ve decided to prohibit the resale of tickets to this event on the site.

We’re not sure if this ban is due to pressure from John–seen here at the 1993 David Cross look-alike competition–but it does seem unfair that eBay is policing the sales for one big concert, and yet still allowing prices to be jacked up for other big, non-commemorative shows to go on unchecked. Or is there some dead-princess martyr discount hidden somewhere in the user agreement?

Ebay ban for Diana concert tickets [dotmusic/Launch]