Is Quentin obligated to pay Amber $125,000 for the stamps now worth $10?

What arguments would Quentin make as to why he shouldn't have to pay the agreed amount? What arguments would Amber make?

We've been discussing mistakes of fact and mistakes of value, but let's probe this a little deeper. Let's play with this. I'm not sure we're there yet.

Let's go back to 1984. 1984, if I have this correctly, was the date of the release of what has become the biggest selling album of all time. I'm speaking, of course, about Michael Jackson's Thriller. You guys remember about-- oh, you can't remember. You're too young. But in any event--

[CHUCKLES]

--this is a big deal. People know about Michael Jackson. And this is back when Michael Jackson was really, really popular, really, really hot. Things didn't go so well for Mr. Jackson later on, but this was a great time, during the early '80s.

And things were so good that there was a feeling-- there was Michael Jackson everything. There were Michael Jackson jackets. There were Michael Jackson gloves. I remember my son had one, and he would walk around doing the moonwalk. It was a very exciting time.

During this period, the British Virgin Islands, which is a territory of Great Britain located in the Caribbean near the American Virgin Islands, decided that it wanted to release a stamp with Michael Jackson's picture on it. So it had him there with the glove and the whole thing.

And it was really quite great, and it became very, very popular. People wanted it just like they wanted everything else having to do with Michael Jackson. But there was a problem. It seems that since the British Virgin Islands is a territory of Great Britain, therefore Great Britain English law applied, and under British law, apparently it is illegal to produce a stamp or a coin with the likeness of a human being other than the royal family.

Well, we all know that Michael Jackson was the King of Pop, but that didn't quite work. Didn't quite work. So it became a big, big embarrassment for the British Virgin Islands. They quickly pulled these stamps off the market. This is all true, by the way, more or less. This is actually something that happened.

So [? Quinton, ?] you are a collector of stamps.

OK.

And you are very interested in these kinds of stamps. But as you probably know as a collector, sometimes things go really wrong in the production of stamps. So let's assume that not only were these stamps now taken off the market, and therefore, relatively rare. But for a very, very few numbers of these stamps, there was a mistake made in their production.

And this, again, is something that actually happens in stamp production. In other words, it's called a reversal. So instead of the stamps being produced like this, somehow, they were produced backwards. So let's say instead of Michael Jackson standing there like this, on this side, he actually looked like this.

Now let's also assume that Amber, here, who you're also a stamp collector--

Oh, yeah.

--and you've got a sheet of Michael Jackson reversed stamps that are precisely the only ones around. I mean, very, very few. They're very, very valuable. And you guys work out a contract for these stamps. This whole sheet that is in mint condition, perfect condition, to be sold for-- the contract price is $125,000. OK?

So let's say you negotiate this deal, and it is negotiated and consummated at noon. But at 10 o'clock in the morning, two hours before you make this deal in Tortola, the capital of the British Virgin Islands, there is a press conference held.

And in this press conference, the officials from the British Virgin Islands announce that given the twin mistakes that they made-- first producing a Michael Jackson stamp, second, producing some that were reversed-- that they deliberately produced thousands and thousands of these stamps that are precisely the same as the stamps that you just sold.

Now you didn't know about this. It had happened already. You made the contract not knowing that the stamps that were sold for $125,000 are now good for mailing a letter in Tortola, and probably that's about all, because the market has been flooded with exactly the same stamps that are indistinguishable from these.

So the question here is, are you obligated to pay $125,000 for these stamps that are relatively valueless?

It depends.

It depends. All right? This is a good student of the law. He knows enough to say it depends. My guess is that you folks watching this also, who are here at our table, have an opinion. Why don't you consider these questions, and then we'll talk about it some more.