Stryker: What've you got?
Scalper: Lunar shuttle tickets, four hundred dollars. I've got smoking, non-smoking, first-class, coach, economy, by the aisle, by the window... [Ted pays] Take it easy, my man. Lunar shuttle tickets! Lunar shuttle tickets!
What's wrong, buddy? The Big Game is here! What's that? You want to go but it's the Big Game so naturally tickets have been sold out for months? Not to worry, I happen to have a few tickets on me... for a small markup.
Wherever there is a big sporting event or a show ranging from anything from a concert to a circus or theater show, expect to find someone illegally selling tickets outside the booth at inflated prices. People who scalp tickets are called scalpers and prey on gullible or desperate spectators. They are commonly found outside of said events or in fixed locations to those who have connections. Of course nowadays they are found on the internet as well. In media, the sellers will look very shady and probably be wearing a Conspicuous Trenchcoat or if not, they'll be Motor Mouths hawking their wares to anyone walking by.
As if paying extra money for tickets wasn't bad enough, just to add insult to injury the tickets may lead you to The Worst Seat in the House or may even be counterfeits that don't get you in at all.
The term "scalping" originally referred to the practice of removing the scalp of a human being, usually a defeated enemy, to claim it as a trophy (in some societies this being a sign that someone was a great warrior). Later, the term would also be adopted to refer to a practice of market manipulation in the context of trading in securities and commodities, though in modern language the term is usually used in the context of sports events or other events with limited seating (e.g. concerts, live shows). This isn't just restricted to tickets: as this article
from TFWiki.net can attest, toy scalping is a plague on toy collecting.
It should be pointed out that there are many occasions where scalpers buy up so much of a particular commodity they cause a shortage, which in turn allows them to charge a higher price for the commodity because of said shortage (this is actually the "market manipulation" mentioned above). While many countries have passed laws to make ticket scalping illegal, this unfortunately hasn't expanded to such things as toys or electronics (such as video game consoles). Some countries do have laws limiting "private" purchasing of large amounts of unopened goods, but not enough to discourage such practices.
Scalpers rely on an ability to predict what commodity (be it a concert ticket, a toy, or a video game console) will be both highly desirable and rare enough that the value won't immediately drop simply by the producers releasing more of the product. For example, hoarding a toy to sell can immediately be undercut by the toy company announcing a new shipment of the toy will be imminent. This is part of the reason sports tickets or concert tickets are so susceptible to this: they are limited because a venue only has a finite number of seats available.
Just to be clear, what makes someone a scalper is the sheer volume and the intent to sell. Buying a concert ticket but then selling it because you suddenly can't go yourself? Not a scalper. Buying 50 or 100 tickets with intent from the start to sell them? Scalper. Buying two of a popular action figure (one to play with and one to keep mint in box)? Not a scalper. Buying the entire stock of the same action figure (e.g. a Star Wars Stormtrooper) in order to create an elaborate diorama? Kind of a jerk move, but not a scalper. Buying the entire stock of the same action figure intending to sit for them a couple of weeks until desperate collectors make lots of noise, and only then offering them up for sale "to help out some fellow collectors"? Definitely a scalper and a jerkass to boot. Then again, all scalpers are jerkasses anyway.
Pro-capitalist organizations have defended the practice, saying that scalpers "perform a service by saving time for those anxious to see the show without standing in long lines to do so", acting as a "middleman performing a valued service."note Denver Post columnist David Harsanyi defends the practice, noting that "scalping involves two adults, voluntarily agreeing on an acceptable price for tickets. If lucky, folks find themselves close enough to faceoff, tipoff or first pitch to engage in a fierce negotiation, allowing one to snag tickets at cost or less."note
May overlap with Honest John's Dealership, but where that trope involves a shady business person selling inferior or shoddy items while claiming they're premium or downplaying their flaws, the items sold by a Shady Scalper are often Exactly What It Says on the Tin... only the way they go about their business is just as shady.
Examples:
- In #15 of the ALF comic, ALF's flashback story is about his ancestor William Shumspeare. At one point we see a Melmacian telling his wife he got tickets to Shumspeare's latest play from a scalper. He's also been scalped.
- In Small Steps, protagonist Armpit gets roped into his friend X-Ray's scheme to scalp concert tickets.
- The Big Bang Theory: In "The Convention Conundrum", the guys are unable to get tickets for the next Comic-Con. While Sheldon tries to put together his own convention, Leonard, Howard and Raj make contact with a scalper to buy tickets. Sheldon tries to talk them out of it, pointing out that if they're caught, it could hurt them legally in the future and get them banned from Comic-Con for life. When the scalper comes knocking, they get scared, turn off the lights and pretend nobody's home.
- Curb Your Enthusiasm: In "The Larry David Sandwich", Larry wants to attend Temple so he can recognise the High Holy Day, but the tickets are typically booked out six months in advance. He encounters a scalper outside the temple and buys two for 300 dollars. Someone spots him buying them and rats him out, and he's asked to leave during the procession as the tickets are actually fake. Cheryl is embarrassed and appropriately angry at Larry.
- When Frank Sinatra comes to town in The Golden Girls, no one believes Sophia when she says that she has connections who can easily obtain the notoriously hard-to-come-by tickets. Each protagonist subsequently goes to lengths to buy tickets themselves, only for Sophia to come through in the end with tickets for all of them. They are subsequently arrested for scalping the extra tickets, causing them all to miss the concert.
- Last Week Tonight with John Oliver had an episode on tickets to concerts and sports games. Of course it also talks about ticket scalpers, even claiming that Ticketmaster was accepting scalping resellers as partners.
- Seinfeld: In "The Opera," George and Kramer have extra tickets to Pagliacci after Joe Davola and Susan cancel last minute, so they sell them scalped at the theater doors. Just as George is about to sell his ticket, Susan finds him and says she can come. George gives her the ticket and gives the first man his own ticket, rendering George unable to see the opera. Kramer sells his ticket to "some nut in a clown suit," who turns out to be Davola himself.
- 1000 Ways to Die: One story features an amateur scalper who sells fake tickets for high school and semi-pro sports games directly outside of the buildings they happen in (it's mentioned that the most important rule of selling counterfeit merchandise is to not stick around in one place for too long, even to count your money). When one of his customers finds out that they've been scammed, the scalper tries to make a run for it across a crosswalk only to get run down by a car due to a slug inadvertently short-circuiting the wiring of the stoplights so that it says green instead of red.
- G.I. Joe: A common complaint of the 2020 onwards G.I.Joe Classified series of action figures is the fact that the toys are so hard to find people generally can't even buy them... unless you're willing to go online and pay much, much higher than retail.
- Things aren't helped by distribution: while a carton of six having two of each character (e.g. 2 Flints, 2 Lady Jayes, 2 COBRA Troopers) sounds reasonable, no one ever buys just one COBRA trooper since they're the franchise's most famous Mooks.
- Worse, some popular characters being exclusive to certain stores is unfortunate but understandable. However, the COBRA Vipers (the other famous Faceless Goons of the franchise) being exclusive to the department store Target is much less understandable. Add to that an already poor distribution, and you have ripe scalper fodder.
- Masters of the Universe: This is part of what killed the toyline of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2002) (and with it, the cartoon itself). Poor toy distribution by Mattel meant that the ratio for a shipment of toys might go with 3 He-Man and 3 Skeletor action figures for every one Teela or Evil-Lyn. This meant those characters became irresistible fodder for scalpers, and also meant that the toyline was doomed because people who wanted to buy toys were instead met with endless shelves full of He-Man and Skeletor... and no one else.
- Transformers: While generally the popular characters like Optimus Prime or Megatron will have more than enough copies released to satisfy fan demand, more niche characters can easily become fodder for scalpers who will then resell the toys at a much higher markup. It should be pointed out that this gets even worse when toys are exclusives that are only available at certain retailers (e.g. stores like Target or Walmart in the US) that are intended from the start to have a limited run.
- Ironically, in-universe mass-production characters often become the target of this due to their scarcity in the franchise. The character Gnaw, for example, is basically the same as the countless swarms of Sharkticons. This means that many collectors will want quite a few Gnaws for army-building or diorama purposes... which also means some collectors will be willing to pay through the nose to get them. That certain characters are shortpacked (i.e. they only make a small part of a shipment of toys) adds to their desirability to scalpers due to their comparative rarity.
- 2020's Earthrise suffered from a perfect storm of limited distribution and production (thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic) as well as having several generic characters clearly meant for army-building. The Quintesson Judge represented the first ever official G1 take on the characters, the Allicons had never been done as toys before, and Fasttrack was easily represented the Guardminders, meaning all of them became highly sought out.
- Some of the exclusive toys for Transformers: War for Cybertron Trilogy resulted in a lot of ill-will from the fanbase, due to releasing Bumblebee and Soundwave in the Netflix Earthrise line. Both were considered the finest representation of their G1 selves in decades (e.g. Bumblebee transformed into an officially licensed Volkswagen Beetle while Soundwave into a tape player), but since they were exclusives they were extremely limited. In fact, on the secondary market Earthrise Bumblebee can go for almost as much as one of the high-end Masterpiece toys, costing anywhere between three and five times as much as it went for retail. The same thing can be said for the Earthrise figures for Ironhide, Prowl, Ratchet, Dirge, Ramjet, and Barricade along with the Kingdom figures for Mirage and Sideswipe, which were only available in Amazon-exclusive multipacks. The ire was so great that Ratchet and Ironhide were given newly-molded mass-retail single-pack releases in the Studio Series 86 line while Dirge was given a mass-retail single-pack rerelease in the Legacy Evolution line.
- When Hasbro announced the development of Victory Saber as a Haslab project, on several Transformers fansites many fans announced they planned to get multiple copies (the maximum allowed per customer being 5). While some intended to get multiple copies for display purposes (e.g. one copy in Star Saber and Victory Leo's robot modes, one copy in their starship modes and one copy in their combined Victory Saber form), others freely stated their intent was to resell their extra copies later once they felt aftermarket demand made it worth it. However, this is not an example of scalping: Haslab projects (including Unicron, Jabba the Hutt's sailbarge, the Razor Crest and the Sentinel) are a mix of a crowdfunding platform and preorder service, meant for projects Hasbro does not think will be financially viable using regular retail. As such, there will only be enough Victory Sabers made to fulfill orders (with a few extra for replacement parts and quality control), meaning that, unlike scalpers who buy a toy reducing how many are available on the market, the people buying multiple copies to sell increased how many would be available instead.
- A Short Hike has a shady boy buy most of the park's store of Golden Feathers to resell them at a 150% markup. Talk to him enough and he'll confess he's doing this to pay for his tuition.
- EarthBound Beginnings: In order to get inside the Live House in Ellay, the player needs to get a ticket. Just outside, there's a man selling tickets for $1200, claiming they're sold out. However, the player can go to the city's department store and buy one for only $350 instead.
- Golden Sun: When first arriving in Tolbi, the Colosseo games are about to start and there's a massive line of people waiting to get in. Unfortunately, by the time you get there, the seats have all been taken, and scalpers can be found near the line. You can't buy any, however, as the games can't start without the presence of the city's ruler, who needs to be rescued from a cave and thanks you by having you participate in the tournament.
- Gossip City: Two scalpers buy Sukatto-man toys from a toymaker and sell them at a much higher price. Other people are forced to buy the toys from them since they buy all the stock. Heiji managed to bungle their operation by tricking them into buying toys that are not selling well due to people hating them leaving them in debt.
- hololive: As their popularity grew, members of Hololive have occasionally encountered or commented on this phenomenon.
- Shortly after Coco Kiryuu announced her attention to graduate from Hololive, she learned that people had begun reselling things like her Kiryuu-kai badges (which were limited edition goods sold during her birthday celebration) at several times their original price. Seemingly in response to this, she declared that those goods would be available once more, this time to celebrate her graduation. While this did have the desired result of making those goods available to people who missed out the first time, this also meant some resellers claimed their Kiryuu-kai badges were "first run" editions.
- After Rushia Uruha's unfortunate departure from Hololive, her already available merchandise jumped in price and upcoming products (e.g. her Figma and Nenderoid figures) were quickly snapped up. While there were naturally many Fandeads (the nickname given to her fans) who wanted them, it was also obvious that many people were buying them up due to realisation that they would never be re-released and thus become more rare and valuable in future.
- On a 16/05/2023 stream, Suisei Hoshimachi noted that she was aware that "resellers" were selling limited edition dolls of her for exorbitant prices, and admitted that she would love for such people who snapped up such merch in order to sell them at a profit (thus denying them to her fans at reasonable prices) to go "extinct".
- In Dan Vs. Baseball, Dan gets Chris to buy baseball game tickets for a thousand dollars each, but about eight other groups all have the exact same seating tickets which leads to a riot and causes everyone to be tear-gassed and thrown out.
- The Fairly OddParents!: In "Nectar Of The Odds", Timmy and his friends desperately try to purchase tickets for Crash Nebula On Ice, only to find them all sold out. They then go to see Francis, who sells tickets in the school bathroom and offers to sell them the ones he has for fifteen hundred dollars. When Timmy protests that he doesn't have that much money, Francis hurls him out of the stall.
Francis: That's for free.
- Fugget About It: In "The Broadfather", Jimmy takes Cookie to a floor show to avoid getting in trouble for forgetting her birthday, only for him to not have any tickets. He then secretly buys them from a guy of native descent in an alleyway for a high price while discussing if the term "scalper" is actually offensive to the latter.
Jimmy: [quietly] Give me two. Good seats.Scalper: Three hundred bucks.Jimmy: Three hundred bucks!? Man, I should become a scalper! Is that word offensive to you people?
- In the Hey Arnold! episode "The Baseball", Arnold and Gerald buy baseball game tickets from a scalper for half price, but the seats are near the top of the stadium and directly behind a pole.
- In The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius, Hugh claims he paid a scalper one hundred bucks for tickets to Jimmy's free school talent show.
- Looney Tunes: In "Johnny Smith and Poker-Huntas", Johnny Smith (played by Egghead) gets jumped by knife-welding Indians in front of a sign that reads "Beware of Scalpers". The chief then tries to sell Egghead some tickets.
Chief: Hey bud, you wanna buy two football tickets to the Rose Bowl on the fifty yard line?Egghead: No thanks; I got six myself to sell! I'm an alumnus.
- Subverted in The Loud House episode "For Bros About to Rock". Lincoln and Clyde buy some concert tickets from a shady guy... who then turns out to be a cop and arrests them because buying tickets from unofficial salespeople is illegal.
- Rocko's Modern Life: In "Spitballs", Rocko and Heffer go to a baseball game to get a new foul ball for Rocko to replace the one that was destroyed by Mr. Bighead. When they arrive at the stadium, the game is sold out and the ticket booth closes. Rocko and Heffer then come across Slippy the Slug, who sells them scalped tickets for $50.00 apiece. They soon find out that their seats are beach chairs on top of an extremely tall lighting rig that's even above space satellites and where Rocko would have no chance of catching a foul ball.
- The Simpsons:
- In "Sunday Cruddy Sunday", Homer tells off a scalper while in line for the Super Bowl only to find out that his own tickets are fake. To add insult to injury, he gets turned away when he tries to buy tickets from the scalper.
- In "The Great Wife Hope", Marge buys some off of one who says a very rehearsed sounding, "I am not a scalper, I am just a dude whose 200 friends didn't show up."
- In "Homer Loves Flanders", a man who is very clearly a scalper manages to purchase all 30,000 tickets to a Springfield Isotopes game, even if he only has ten dollars to pay for the whole lot. Homer (who had been camping in line for a whole week to purchase one) does his characteristic "D'oh!" when he finds out they are all sold out.
- Sonic Boom: In "The Evil Dr. Orbot," Eggman starts the episode destroying the excess supply of Fuzzy Puppy Buddies to increase the value of his own collection, only to be stopped by Team Sonic. Later on, Orbot improves on the plan behind Eggman's back, having a "mysterious buyer" (Cubot) offer to pay $1000 per figurine. Orbot then sold the figures at half the offered rate, spiking demand. People would buy three at a time - one to play with, one mint in box, and one to resell. Cubot then purchased the resold figures at the promised rate, earning Orbot a profit while inflating the value of Eggman's collection.
- Christmas time is prime toy scalper season, as they hunt down and purchase as many of the hottest toys as they can in order to sell later at marked-up prices. In this article, for example, the writer expresses his disgust for people shamelessly hoarding Furbies and then putting their greed on display by advertising them for sale for up to 350 US dollars (for the record, the retail price was $30).
- In the buildup to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Japan passed an anti-scalping law to prevent people from reselling their tickets, since it was feared that since only limited people were eligible to buy them (chosen via lottery) that might tempt them into offering their tickets up for sale.
- When the NES Classic Edition came out, it was hard to find one throughout the run. Depending on who you ask, it was either Nintendo creating artificial scarcity or Nintendo underestimating the popularity of the console (a dichotomy that they've faced since at least 1990). As you would expect, they became a prime target for scalpers.
- Nintendo products in general can become a prime target for scalpers. Notably, the scarcity of amiibo have lead to third parties to come up with alternatives, including amiibo chips.
- Within hours of its announcement, controllers for Nintendo Switch Online's Nintendo 64 service were sold out with prices on online shopping sites more than tripling the MSRP (Nintendo has the controller listed for $50, the scalpers jacked it up to between $100 to $300).
- Scalpers made use of bots to buy up already limited supplies of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S consoles when they were first released, with them shortly appearing on reselling sites like eBay at double the $500 retail price. This, combined with the ongoing chip shortage has lead to PS5s being nigh-impossible to gain at retail price.
- This particular incident was done during a pandemic. The timing combined with intentionally making it impossible to purchase at retail price made the Playstation 5 Launch one of the more scummy things done by scalpers.
- From 2020 to early 2022, gaming graphics cards had a perfect storm of scarcity. Supply chain issues reduced supply, while demand increased from people staying at home and Ethereum cryptocurrency experiencing a boom. This, of course, led to scalpers buying out cards and selling them at inflated prices, with the Nvidia RTX 3070 exceeding twice the original MSRP on Ebay.
- Despite being ostensibly a legitimate ticket sales website used by many major events, Ticketmaster has faced controversy for price inflation and alleged relationships with scalpers. This culminated in late 2022, when the website crashed right as the tickets for Taylor Swift's latest tour went on sale, leaving millions of fans disappointed but still allowing scalpers to buy tickets, which turned up slightly afterwards for extortionate prices. Understandably, irate fans filed multiple lawsuits for poor customer service, and ultimately resulted in Ticketmaster being Hauled Before A Senate Subcommittee.
