So funny that you listed this story, because a very interesting thing happened to me today...

(Let me preface this by saying I've seen every internet-ticket scam in the book dozens of times)

My parents (early 60s) are still in St Louis. Tonight was the last Cards-Cubs game, and since the Cards suck, prices were the cheapest they've ever been. I decided to treat my parents to those all-inclusive seats right behind the plate. (These seats retail for 250 ea but are never available to non-psl holders)

I went on Stubhub around 11am and found a couple pairs at 150/a ticket. There was also a four-pack in the very first row behind the plate for 250 ea. I decided to wait that out and pull the trigger if it got to 200 ea. At about noon they sell at 250 ea.

At about 1pm I see an ad on craigslist offering the EXACT four seats, (section 4, row A, seats 5-8) that I had seen sell on Stubhub at 250 ea! The guy wants 100 ea. Obviously this will be a "xfer me on western union" kind of scam, but I'm bored and decide to mess with him.

I email offering to buy 2 for 100 ea. He emails me back and says "I'm in Barbados for business, but I will email you the 2 tickets, and next week you can western union me the money." (wtf! How could these tix possibly be valid?) He even texts me from a 261-area code (barbados number)

I lol and accept the deal. He emails me seats 7 and 8. They were purchased on Stubhub and have an order confirmation number showing they were bought today. I immediately list the pair back onto Stubhub, and sure enough, the barcodes are valid!

So obviously I figure these tickets were purchased for 250 ea with some stolen credit card for a day-of-game sale, and the scam is counting on the fact Stubhub won't figure it out until tomorrow.

I email the tickets to my parents, I tell them to call me if the tix are refused at the gate and I'll find them something else.

Watched the game on mlb.tv and saw my parents stuffing nachos into their faces first row behind the plate for the whole game.

Pretty ingenious scam when you think about it. Now the question is: do I pay send this guy the money??

Why not follow with StubHub and see if the transaction proves to be legitimate on their end? If it isn't, you can always tell the "seller" that your parents were refused entry due to bogus tickets.

What's the best way to hunt down tickets if one is looking for a weird number (in this case 5). Is it best to just scan for prices, grab a good 6-pack and try to flip the odd ticket?

There's no way Stubhub will give me any info. All I have is the name of the original "purchaser" on the ticket (the victim probably), and the Stubhub order ID number.

Since I'm not the buyer nor the seller, there's no way they will give me any info. Also if it's a stolen cc, SH is going to find out very soon, if they haven't already.

I've had about 3 stolen cc's in my last 1000 orders on Stubhub. Their policy is great for sellers imo. If you already confirmed the order, they will honor your payment, and resell the tix on their site. If you haven't confirmed the order yet, they insta-cancel the sale and your tickets are still listed with the site.

You can search for a 5-pack on Stubhub. Also look at ticketnetwork.com. I can get you those tickets without the 15-18% service fee if you pm me the details because I can see which broker owns the seats.

Thanks, I'll look some more. The problem is that the selection for 5 is muuuuuch smaller than 6. I may well take you up on the offer.

Then is all seating first come first serve? Seems like an easy way to start a huge fight/stampede to get to the best seats.

You've made an awesome "ask me" thread here, haters gonna hate.

Great thread, although for a European who doesnt understand alot of the culture or whatever behind alot of the American games some of it is pretty confusing

otp!,

pistons single game tickets go on sale tomorrow morning

i don't have anything better to do, so i was planning on trying to buy some tickets for pistons/heat

the heat come to town twice (2/11, 3/23)

i've got about $400 to put towards tickets, how can i maximize my ROI?

Honestly the pistons market is S**T.

If you are bored go ahead and buy the ABSOLUTE cheapest face value tix for 2/11. The second the onsale starts, instead of BEST AVAILABLE, go to the cheapest price category and go for 4 tix in one window, 6 in another, 2 in another, etc.

I wouldn't even touch lower level seats for that, nor would I touch the home opener unfortunately.

bah i was hoping to buy 4 lower level seats and sell two of them for what 4 cost me

oh well, thanks for saving me from getting up early!

pic of my inventory for this weekend's Twins-A's series at Target Field as of 12:30am tonight.

Started out with about 95 tix for Friday, 180 for Sat, 90 for Sunday...About $12,000 worth of inventory. I'm up about $4-5k so far and am sitting on 60 for tomorrow, 120 for Sat, 70 for Sun.

Might lose my shirt tomorrow if it rains tomorrow in mpls, but Saturdays game remains strong (cheapest 3-pack on Stubhub is $60-65 ea, 4-packs around $50).





(About 80% of my inventory for this game are hard tix pictured. I've bought about 50-60 seats on Stubhub in last few weeks of underpriced stuff)

While I might stand to make $6-$10K this weekend, depending on weather, I do take big losses on other events.

This is my stack of inventory for the Twins upcoming series, CLE 9/20-9/22 and TOR 9/30-10/3. They are going to have the division clinched too early than I had planned and I will take a serious loss most likely (esp the final series)

Last brag post for tonight:

This is my Stubhub --> Bank transfers via Paypal for Aug/Sep. This is also net of all purchases I made in last 90 days (about $5-7k)

How do you physically deliver all of those tickets? Seems like it would be a real pain in the ass. Assumed you did a fair amount of work with electronic tickets or something.

For MLB I sell 90% of my tickets through Stubhub. I have a usb barcode scanner to upload all the barcodes....

When you buy MLB tix on SH, and they are listed as "instant delivery", you can print out the tickets 30 seconds after your purchase. I get real-time sales summaries everytime I make a sale. I then have to find the hard tix and either shred them or file them away. (I shred all my mlb tix, but I know some brokers who keep them for tax purposes (?)

the other 10% of my sales are through my website or ticketnetwork. I either Fedex them to the customer or if it's a day-of-purchase for an out-of-town event, I will fedex my tickets to an in-town broker who will do will-calls for a small fee.

Roger Waters is playing 3 days at the United Center; Monday, Tuesday Thursday next week. Which day would you think has the cheapest tickets or do you think they'll all be about the same. Is it worth trying to scalp some at the door for cheaper than stubhub?

Waters at United Center is a massive bust. I can get most uppers <50 ea and front floors <200 ea. Tuesday should be the weakest night. If I were you I'd check craigslist the morning/early afternoon on Tuesday, I wouldn't be surprised to see 20 dollar seats.

You, sir, are a real entrepreneur. May even be worth getting a trademark, etc. (I say as an IP lawyer).

If you did not already know, Arcade Fire seems to be a very hot ticket. A friend got us tickets late in the presale in for LA (6k seat shrine) on a Friday and we have about the worst in the house. Plus, their demo is fairly well off (though prob. not boomer well off) and reasonably devoted. They put on a great show.

Also, Texans up, Cowboys down?

sick thread, my fave ask me thread since the thailand one

Cool thread.

On the concert front, how much time do you spend studying tour ticket sales, as well as upcoming artists w/strong followings? Do you make more on established artists (e.g. Springsteen) or new, hot acts?

First off, I'm with the crowd that thinks this is really scummy. If I have a spare ticket for a show, I would look to offload it at face value before the show, hopefully in front of several onlooking scalpers. I know this avenue has been explored already and it's kinda boring, so I'm not going to elaborate and I'm not looking to discuss it further.

I have a question though. Sometimes, at least in the UK, when an artist insta-sellouts a venue, they pretty quickly add a new date at the same venue. When I saw Pavement in London Brixton Academy, I think they went from 1 night to 4 nights (like 1+1+1+1, all shows announced separately). I'm assuming that would hurt a broker (lol) since supply is 4x larger than what it was when you got your monkeys to hammer the ticket agent's website. Or do you have a way of knowing that the other days are coming?

I'm surprised to see so much about sporting events here. AFAIK, this just doesn't happen in the UK, excepting maybe the London football clubs and Man Utd. Maybe I'm just out of the loop. People buy their season tickets because, y'know, they want to go to every game. If they can't get there for a game, they might pass it on to a friend.

BTW, the only absolute sure way I can see to make guaranteed money in the UK is to snap up the standing tickets for indie rock bands that have got big and are playing arenas. Over here, that's Radiohead, Coldplay, Kings of Leon, Oasis when they were still going, bands like that. If you can get them for Fri/Sat night, more power to you. Also, you might get some bands that are slightly smaller than those listed keepin it real at smaller venues that they're a bit too big for. I guess those are hot tickets too. Is that your bread and butter?

Speaking of awesome StubHub seller policies, I recently confirmed a bunch of orders with a future in-hand date for Redskins tickets. I had to change the in-hand date so I called and they were supposed to make notes on all of my orders. They missed most of them however and a buyer called to cancel one of the orders that hadn't been noted. After talking to CS they realized their mistake. I asked for compensation considering they left me with little time to find another buyer (this was for the first preseason game vs the Bills).

Here's where it gets weird, they said if I could show them the tickets by the new in hand date they would pay me the original sale price. If I showed them after the new in hand date they would pay me face value. Obviously being a preseason game against an unpopular opponent, face value was way above my sale price (5x as much to be specific). I tried to explain this to them but they didn't budge on their policy. So I waited until the day after my new in-hand date to send them a copy of the tickets. Instead of a $170 sale price-fees I was paid >$1000 for that order. And my brother got to use the tickets to take a few of his friends out to the game.

If I missed the boat on season tickets for a college basketball team, are there better options other than craigslist and stubhub in terms of availability?