For example, the day after Christmas, here in Columbus, OH, was a Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert. I wanted to go, but I was feeling particularly cheap, and didn't want to pay full price. I believe tickets started at around $50 for nosebleed seats, up to around $80 for floor seats. I also didn't want to pay the $10 for parking. Hence, I began hatching a plan to go, as cheaply as possible. My plan was to find an extra ticket that someone wanted to recoup their money on, before the concert started. Once the concert starts, the ticket essentially worthless.
The first step was avoiding parking fees. This was particularly important to me, as I wasn't sure I would be able to get a ticket for the amount of money I wanted to spend. I certainly didn't want to pay $10 to park at a concert I couldn't get into! So, to avoid parking fees, I parked in the neighborhood just north of the arena. It was less than a mile, and took around 20 minutes to walk to the arena from there. I've been to many events in the Arena District, and you can easily spend 20 minutes just getting into/out of the parking garages, so this was already a win.
Next, I needed a ticket. For cheap. As far as I can tell, scalping tickets, at least in Columbus, OH, is not illegal, as long as it's for face value or less. I always see guys with "NEED TICKETS" signs around their necks, not even 100 feet from the doors, so I imagine if it were illegal, they'd be shooed away long ago.
At around 10 minutes to showtime, I approached Mr. Needs Tickets, and said, "I need a single ticket." At this point, it felt really, really sketchy. I'm an introvert by nature, and just doing that was out of my comfort zone. He said, "Best seat in the house, club level, $150." First of all, club level isn't (technically) the best seat in the house, and since that's over face value ($60), I'm pretty sure that's illegal. I told him that I had $30 cash on me. He acted incredibly offended and said, "$30? What do you think you're gonna get for $30?!?! You can't even get a ticket at the window for $30!!" I said, "I was just hoping if you had any cheap seats to go right before showtime." He said, "Let me see your money." This was, by far, the shadiest feeling point of the whole experience. I pulled the $30 out of my pocket and showed him. He said, "Here you go, Merry Christmas." and handed me the ticket that he had just tried to sell me for $150, in exchange for my $30.
At this point, I was both excited and apprehensive. It was a print-at-home ticket, and for all I knew, it was fake, or a duplicate someone had already used to enter the arena. For all I knew, the guy did that to people who were cheap to him. So I got in line, waited, and they scanned my ticket. *DING* I'm in!
I went to my seat, happy both to be at the concert, and also to have paid half of what everyone else around me had paid. While it wasn't technically the "best seat" in the house, it was perfect. Behind the mixing/lighting consoles, and up off the floor, a pretty straight-on view. A few minutes later, a woman sat next to me and said, "So I guess you're the guy who bought my extra ticket." She said she had sold it to the scalper a few minutes earlier, and she was surprised that the guy had been able to resell a single ticket. She didn't say why she had the extra ticket, but did say that he had paid her $20 for the ticket. So while she did lose $40, she could have lost $60. The scalper took his $20 investment and made $10 profit, and I saw an awesome show, for half price. It was a NotLoseAsMuch-Win-Win situation.
So, you can see by the title of this post, that there's several qualifiers... Maybe... Patient... and flexible... First, there's no guarantee that there will be tickets available, nor is there a guarantee that the scalper will be willing to sell to you for the amount you're willing to pay. If I had offered $20, he probably wouldn't have taken it, since he would have made no profit. If going to the concert is extremely important to you, you may just want to suck it up and pay full price from the box office.
However, if I had waited until showtime, or possibly even a few minutes after, I might have been able to get it for $20, or possibly even $10. At that point, he would be like the original ticket purchaser, just wanting to get some of their investment back. Therein lies the patience requirement. I was not that patient, as I really did want to see the show.
And finally, flexible. There was one ticket available. My lovely wife had seen TSO before, and while she enjoyed it, she did not care to see them again. That was to my advantage, in this case, as the seat was great. Had I needed 2 (or more) seats together, the selection would probably have been poorer, or possibly non-existent. Or the cost could have been higher, since single tickets are presumably harder to get scalp. There's always the possibility of buying 2 (or more) single tickets, and not sitting with the person you're going with. Works fine for a concert (Personal pet peeve: people who talk at concerts. People around you paid to hear the music, not your inane conversation.), but not as fun for a sporting event.
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