Licensing laws define a business, usually. Most places define an auto dealer, for exampel, as something like "selling x or more cars per year" where the number is only like 3. It allows you to turn over a pair of family cars but anything more than that and you're running a business in the town's eyes.
I'd bet that cabs would fall into some generic category that makes it hard to define and easily open to challenge if he wanted to spend the legal fees to do so.
Exactly. My state defines that practice at 10 cars per year, and the title has the seller's address on it (by law that section has to be filled out), and beyond 10, there's fines that exceed the cost of the business license. My guess is car dealers (a "lobbying group") set this up so they wouldn't have so much competition.
I'm guessing this situation is like Saint laid it out, baseball cards, only like every story, there could be more to this. Texasmame has said he's purchased a game off of him in the past. What if this guy really IS selling games out of his house, only not at a rate he feels is "excessive"?
Maybe this is due to a build-up of people getting tired of seeing cars/trucks/whatever roll up, something that's been happening over time, and some jerkoff tore up a neighbor's lawn trying to maneuver their trailer around, and it was the straw that broke the camel's back?
It's becoming uncommon for people to actually want to deal with uncomfortable situations, and this could be some henpecked husband's method of dealing with the situation AND his wife at the same time. Problem is, once you start the "I'll let someone ELSE handle my problems for me" snowball, it quickly gets out of your control.