What is worse ticket scalpers or vultures?

[Elixirplaya]

BM culture is against scalpers and selling above face. In the last two weeks, we have seen prices temporarily drop as the supply is too high. Yet buyers seem to think this is fair. Demand will rise as word spreads the playa conditions are actually decent. When prices go above cost, will those same buyers then complain?

Anyone buying below cost because they don't have the $ should supplement with some barter. Make someone a costume, offer to give them a lift, make their food. Whatever.

It's either supply and demand or selling at cost. You can't have it both ways.

[gyre]

Demand always drops when it is too close to the burn to go.

If I was going, I needed to leave a week ago.

There are lots of non-transferable tickets, many for sale.
And lots of voided tickets.

Some of the people on eplaya now seem have an endless supply of tickets.
No one wants to mitigate a scalper's loss.

And note that most people fail to post a location or phone number.
Massive failure at this late date.

If there are tons of first tier tickets appearing from the vaults, who will buy a fourth tier, and spend a lot of extra money to prepare to go this late?
Only people close to you locally, or who think you are easier to deal with or more trustworthy for some reason.

Everyone that could afford to go, got tickets long ago.
You're left with people with sudden free time, or with no money to spend.

[wraith]

BM culture is against scalpers and selling above face. In the last two weeks, we have seen prices temporarily drop as the supply is too high. Yet buyers seem to think this is fair. Demand will rise as word spreads the playa conditions are actually decent. When prices go above cost, will those same buyers then complain?

Anyone buying below cost because they don't have the $ should supplement with some barter. Make someone a costume, offer to give them a lift, make their food. Whatever.

It's either supply and demand or selling at cost. You can't have it both ways.

We're less than 24 hours from TTITD. Prices aren't going back up. The only tickets that are going to sell now are ones than can be handed over face-to-face someplace within easy driving distance of BRC, and they'll likely go for desperately cheap.

This happens every year.

[Elixirplaya]

Not true. I have sold mine for a combo of money and good/services, after having refused $150 offers from vultures.

[gyre]

I've been offering scalpers $1 for a voided ticket.

Is that predatory?
Or full value?


One of the scalpers I wrote just re-listed their unsold tickets for $750 for 2, down from $1,000 or $2,000.

[Elixirplaya]

Hi Gyre,

I am all for you taking advantage of scalpers who had been trying to profit. The issue is that they are in the minority (BM estimates as low as 1%). The vast majority of people bought tickets for friends or themselves and they weren't being used. They posted them on STEP or sold them at cost up until two weeks ago, when the prices came down.

I have noticed the supply is drying up, by the way. So prices may go up again.

[uncle sticky]

Gate opens in 9 hours. Tickets aren't going back up. At this point your best option is to find somebody who might like the show and can get their shit together, and hand them that ticket.

[gyre]

Hi there!

Good scalpers don't tell anyone how many tickets they have, or post them all at once.

It is much harder to track when there are no reserved seats to compare as a bloc.

Even if it is 1% now, if they profit, it will get worse.

Typically most people have given up on selling extra tickets by this time, so hard to tell how many tickets are unused until the gate count is done.

For whatever reason, it is getting harder to sell tickets close to the burn, and by close, I mean by wednesday or thursday before the burn.
After that, people are busy or gone.

It will be hard to tell whether tickets are all sold, or just tossed on a shelf.
There have always been unused tickets too.
It wasn't so bad when they were $60.

Most people have already left home by now.
Many people that have to be there are already on the playa.

it becomes more about persuading people to go that weren't planning to go, at this point.
The show has already started.