I Got Two Who Needs Two

I'm totally a pro. I'm wheelin', dealin', exchanging, upgrading, printing tickets out of my ass. My first customer, Mike, who took his son to the fireworks game this past weekend, brokered a relationship between me and his buddy, who ended up coming down to meet me at my office yesterday to pick up a pair of tickets for the Sunday Cincinnati game on the last weekend of the season. Then Mike inquired about tickets for another fireworks game, August 25th I think, and of course he gets the very first seasonticketsbaby return customer discount. Way to go, Mike!

I had a kickball game last night (and we were on a 2 game winning streak -- shout out to the PSL Red Team aka North Korean All-Stars, Supreme Kickball Rulers) so I wanted to sell my tickets rather than attend the first game in the Cubs series.  As soon as I put them on craigslist Sunday night I got a few messages and arranged to sell them Monday afternoon near CMU.  Nice and easy, simple, straight forward, and the thing is, since my seats are excellent, people are very pleased with the arrangement.  They're paying less than face value, and I'm getting more than I paid for them.  So it's a deal for both.  They want to get more from me, and they pass my info along to their friends. 

Then a friend of mine got in touch with me. Local sports fan Tim McWig asked about tickets to a day game, to take his daughter to her first game since gaining consciousness. He decided to take Thursday August 16th at 4 against the Dodgers. He's my first paypal transaction, which is great. The Pirates season ticket holder online program lets you manage all your tickets: exchanges, transfers, donations, etc. (By the way, I can donate unused tickets to a children's charity and deduct them from my taxes. Sweet.) So I got my account set up online to transfer tickets to Tim. I just enter his name and email and send them over. He prints them out himself and we're good to go. No need to meet anywhere or exchange a million text messages. Brilliant - and modern. This is all part of the new experience.

Then comes the news that fellow Towson High and Carnegie Mellon alum Jeff Smith, The Chief, is on a road trip and will be in town this week!  Well, take me out to the ballgame and blast me with a hot dog canon, alright!  Let's all go down to PNC Park.  I got the ticket hookup, I'm the pro, I'm the VIP, I got this.  So I call up Kevin, my Pirates ticket representative, to see how this will all work.  If I want to add on any single tickets in addition to my regular ones, I get a modest discount on the price.  If I am actually exchanging  (current or future) tickets I already have then I get the full season ticket discounted price.  So, adding on gets me the small discount, but exchanging gets me the full discounted price.  

So it turns out that both tonight and tomorrow afternoon are pretty booked.  This is a popular ticket right now, and my price range -- Outfield Box -- is apparently very appealing.  So we can't get 5 tickets together tonight or tomorrow in my regular section or even anywhere in the same price tier!  (Well done Pirates fans, keep that attendance figure rising!)  So I can exchange my regular 2 for tonight, then add on 3 additional, and upgrade to Infield Box seats, or downgrade and go upper level (boooo).  So for the 5 Infield Box seats, for which face value would be 33$ I guess, I get 2 of them for 26$ (because of the exchange) and 3 of them (the ones added on) for 30$.  And of course no fees (although, hmm, I do need to check on that to make sure).  Not as extreme a discount as I get on my regular Outfield Box tickets, which is nearly 50%, but still nice.

For tomorrow's game there are 4 seats together in the Lower Outfield Box.  So I will exchange my 2 regular tickets for tomorrow plus 2 of my regular tickets for a future game, to get the 4 tickets together.  And because I'm exchanging 4 (not adding any of them on) I will get the full season discounted price.  Those are only 4$ more than my regular seats, and are also about 50% off.

Ok so this is pretty boring to almost everyone but me.  It helps me understand everything when I can articulate it on the page like this, though.  Plus it gives me a written record (qualitative data, in addition to my spreadsheets of quantitative data) that I can look back on.  Over the past week I've sold tickets via craigslist, through friends, and word of mouth.  I've sold 13% of my games and made back 25% of my cost.  And only 1 game that I sold -- one of the fireworks games -- sold for more than face value (3$ more).  So I'm selling them for less than people would pay normally, but still at a price that's beneficial for me.