TicketCrush.com

From one of our loyal readers, Jo...

I wanted to see what this Hannah Montana thing was all about, and test the waters before the onsale for my area next week. My daughter, who ONLY 5 YRS OLD, wants to go. So, I got on TM and was ready to rock and roll at exactly 10 am this morning. I had 3 browsers all set - Mozilla, Explorer, and Netscape. I am sure you know that doing it that way does not cancel out an existing search result, though it does if you use 3 Explorers, or 3 Mozillas etc. That way I had 3 chances and could hold 3 sets of tickets before deciding what to buy. You can share that tip with your mailing list if you want ... they probably already know it, and in practice it is not so easy to do anyway. You have to have very nimble fingers and be super careful not to open the same browser twice.

Anyway, some decent seats came up for Greensboro NC. They were 2nd tier, closest full view next to the stage but I passed, since I usually don't buy unless I get first 10 rows of floor or lowers very close to the stage. Plus, I hadn't researched the market and did not know what tickets were selling for Hannah Montana. I didn't realize until later on that ANY ticket was probably a decent bet!!! After 15 minutes of searching, nothing better ever came up at any venue. And then, they all sold out for all the 10 am presales. So, after all my efforts, I just wasted time.

I tried again for the next set of shows at 11 am EST, at exactly the moment of the onsale. On my first search, I picked up 4 in the upper tier, closest to the stage, full view, for Allstate Arena in Rosemont IL on Sat 12/8. No messing around this time - I figured they were the best I would get. Needless to say, Allstate Arena was sold out within a few minutes.

I had to go pick up my son at preschool and be back by noon to get my daughter off the bus from kindergarten, so I literally had only a minute to put them up on StubHub. I took a quick look at prices, but there was nothing near my section that had sold, so I just put them up there at $200. On a hunch, I quickly changed the price to $225. By the time I went back in to take a look at my listing, they were GONE. Literally sold in less than a minute. I probably priced them on the low side, but there were about 45 listings when I first put them up, and by the time I got home there were over twice as many listings, and I made $486 on four tickets.

My question is - what in the world does one have to do to get close seats in this kind of situation? In all my searching this morning, only second tier came up. Never lowers, never the floor. I searched for 3 or 4 tickets each time, not pairs, best available. I really don't want to bother selling pairs.

When tickets go onsale in 2 weeks for my area, I want to try to get as close as possible for my daughter, and I need four seats for Newark. I took my daughter to see Josh Groban, and she pointed front and center and said that was where she wanted to be ..... she is already a seat snob. Not to mention, we were already sitting in the best lowers in the house for that show ...

Labels: Hannah Montana