Bloggin' Through the Playoffs - What trouble with the economy?

Seems to me like a good investment vehicle in these stressful times are Rays playoff tickets!

To put it in perspective, the Dow's all-time high was 14,164 almost exacly 1 year ago today on October 9th, 2007. As of yesterday's over 500 point drop, the Dow is off 33% from it's high. The NASDAQ is an even worse story. It's high was right before the dot com bust of 2000. In February of 2000 the NASDAQ was at 4696. Today, the NASDAQ will open at 1754, a drop of over 62%. From it's 1 year high last October 31st of 2859, the NASDAQ is off over 38%.

Now, let's talk about Rays' playoff tickets. Check out this article from yesterday regarding playoff tickets at the Trop going for $19,999! I checked on stubhub.com and could not find any priced that high, but did see some for $17,500. I am pretty sure that there is some serious profit taking going on there. Oh, and by the way, the scalping law was repealed by Governor Jeb Bush back in July of 2006, here's a link to an article describing it. (Thanks to my buddy Smitty for the link).

To dig deeper, I decided to compare to our seats and see what they were going for. We sit in section 143, row CC, seats 1-4. Row CC is about 10 rows back in left field, sort of near the State Farm sign on the left field fence. The face value for our seats in the ALCS is only $25.00. Tickets in section 143 for Friday's 1st ALCS game are going for $159.99 to $350 each. I looked closer and there are 2 sets of tickets that are considered better that ours, on the 2nd row, so let's leave those out (they are $249 and $350 each, respectively). All the rest, I would consider not as good as ours, they top out at $175. That's a 700% profit. As I look deeper, the profit is even great in other parts of the stadium.

But, here's 2 things to consider...

1) Do you really want to miss these games? Not us, I'm perfectly happy as long as I have my seats and will be there sitting next to the guy who paid $175 for the same seat I paid $25. But that's what free economy is all about I suppose. Now, if they make it to the World Series, the face value on our seats goes up to $150, who knows how much they would go for!

2) If you do indeed decide to sell any tickets, which I certainly don't fault you for doing in these rough economic times, you absolutely must make sure you are not selling to any Red Sox fans! You can determine this with some easy questions during the selling process. Questions such as:

• Do you like clam chowder?
• What does 9=8 mean?
• Do you like the song Sweet Caroline? (they play it at Fenway before the bottom of every 8th inning - I suggest a parody song at the Trop called Sweet Sonnanstine).
  
• Ask for their response to Tom Brady's injury because if they are upset about that, they are probably Red Sox fans as well.
• Ask if they have eaten any free Dunkin Doughnuts this season?
• Ask if they have been to Kane's Furniture to get a free Papa John's pizza this season?

I'm sure you can come up with many more on your own.

Bottom Line - okay to take some profits on your tix, but choose wisely on who you sell to so we can show Red Sox Nation what Ray's Nation is all about!

Go Rays!
- Steve