Young people have no idea …

Buying concert tickets the morning they go on sale by lining up at the Ticketmaster window in a department or record store.

 

Test patterns preceded by the Star-Spangled Banner (accompanied by images of fighter jets and American flags) at 1 or 2 a.m.

 

That was awful. I think people have pointed out it was filled with fraud.

 

Staying on the checks theme, remember when you had to go into banks and fill out the deposit/withdrawal slips, and the pen was chained to the table? Like, dude, there are better targets in a bank than your cheap pen.

I don't know if it's been mentioned, but waiting by the mailbox for The Sporting News or SI.

I'll throw in going to the store for the first pre-season football guides when I used to play fantasy football. I'm sure those magazines are still published, but everything is podcasts and online now.

(Get off my lawn kids)

 

HINT: Ticket sales are still filled with fraud.

 

Had a friend who worked at The Broadway Department Store, which had a Ticketron counter. Tickets were available in the system before the public sale, so he’d pull ours first thing when he got to work so we never had to get up early and wait . I can’t say that we paid for them all either.

 

You're right. Live Nation skimming prime seats and reselling themselves is a far better solution, as is "on demand pricing" where the seats are fully scalped from the jump.

I was a veteran of those tickets wars. It was a lot harder to assemble twenty street people to buy the max number of seats than it is to use computer bots.

 

Buying concert tickets (or airline tickets, or baseball tickets, etc.) for actual face value and not paying astronomical add-ons.

 

I don't want to buy tickets to concerts, etc., anymore. When T-Mobile first opened in Vegas, my wife and her friend wanted to see Garth Brooks. I had presale rights through American Express, so I tried it right at the beginning of the presale. Got the best tickets available. They were BEHIND the stage. The first two warmup bands, we watched on TV monitors. When Brooks came out, they dropped the walls, so it was like a theater-in-the-round, but he was still singing toward the bulk of the audience, which was not us. He looked in our direction for a couple of songs, but I was pretty much seething when we left. I decided to not buy tickets anymore.

I have a friend who buys concert tickets all the time -- he might go to 10 or more shows a month. Whenever something comes along that I'd be interested in, I get him to buy the tickets and pay him back. He must know some secret formula. About 8-9 years ago, when I bought Ducks season tickets, the first thing he asked me was, as a Ducks season-ticket holder, do you get early buying privileges for concerts at Honda Center? Uh, no.

 

Concerts are a pain in the ass these days because of how the sales are set up. Almost all of them are through Ticketmaster, which has a crap ton of presales, which doesn't guarantee you will actually get into the sale, then they do dynamic pricing, which is insane. In most cases it leads to through the roof prices right out of the gate. It creates false demand and those inflated prices. They either force people who really want to go to spend out of the ass to make sure they have them, or keeps prices high until right up to the show, so you have no idea if they will drop or not.

My wife is a George Strait fan, and we have seen him multiple times in several states. He is playing some stadium shows this year and Denver tonight. Until a few weeks ago, nosebleeds in a freaking stadium for George Strait, who is really popular still, were $500. I just can't justify that. They have come down to about $150 today but we have seen him so much and for much less in much better places we haven't been able to justify pulling the trigger.

We went to a show last week in a small park amphitheater for a few 90s acts and face value for seats was like $130. It was a good crowd, but needless to say it wasn't sold out. We bought tickets in a similar area as the expensive seats off StubHub for $35. Ticketmaster did not adjust their prices despite tickets still being available.

I think this is in a way the Taylor Swift effect. While she obviously has lived up to that demand, not everyone does. It is crazy.

The best way to get tickets if you really want to go is to sign up for all those presales you can, you'll get lucky with one, or join fan clubs and get access to their seats. Many have set prices. Taylor Swift to her credit had set prices for the original sale. We got in on a presale (had signed up for tons with multiple people), and got first-level seats for like $200 a pop. Then after all those avenues are spent, just watch the secondhand market and hope they drop and decide on your budget!

In this regard, as much as a pain as Ticketmaster or box office lines were, kids today do not know how relatively simple it was to get seats at an OK price.

 

All of us Boomers have stories like this, but I remember walking into the old gym at UVa, plunking down $5 for my ticket to see Bruce Springsteen in Nov., 1974. I think it cost me $5 or $10 presale to see George Thoroughgood and the Destroyers on their 50 states, 50 days tour in 80 or 81. No fees, no add-ons, no service charges, no hassle.

OK, Boomer!