8 ms·

I staked $15k, bought season tickets for my favourite baseball team, wrote an electron app to auto-price and market those tickets under face value. We ended up

I staked $15k, bought season tickets for my favourite baseball team, wrote an electron app to auto-price and market those tickets under face value. We ended up going to 6-7 games for free, sat in MUCH better seats than we ever could have afforded to, and had access to playoff tickets at face value. Further, my friends had access to great seats at reasonable prices and I avoided having to buy from resale sites (who I detest). 90% of the process was automated.

tailspin2019 4y ago
> wrote an electron app to auto-price and market those tickets under face value Could you elaborate on this a little? I think I can imagine, but am curious to hear a bit more about how this worked!
- MattyMc 4y ago
  For sure. Generally, the electron app would pull face value prices and availability from [baseballteam].com, current resale prices from hubstub.com (<- changing name) and stick them into a mini database (object store). From there, I could use these snapshots to track sales across the resale site, determine a fair value for my tickets, and estimate the probability of it selling (by comparing ticket availability between days on the resale site). Next, I had collected a list of email addresses from friends and a few posts on Facebook and Craigslist. The app had a button create/update a Google sheet with games/prices, pull in the emails, and batch email people (in groups of <50) the information along with the games. The manual part was marking the games as sold in the sheet, tracking etransfers and sending tickets, but it was little work.
  - tailspin2019 4y ago
    Very cool :)
tiffanyh 4y ago
This sounds more like an algorithm to maximize your benefit from the $15k you spent. As opposed to a "money making business". (Still very cool though).
- mathgeek 4y ago
  Curious: at what volume would you consider an individual buying products in bulk and then reselling them individually to be a side business?
  - lobocinza 4y ago
    Dropshipping?
- MattyMc 4y ago
  Fair point, and thanks :) The way I think of it is more of taking advantage of an arbitrage (~20% discount on season tickets to face value). Instead of selling all the tickets to earn ~$2k each year, we kept and used the tickets to our benefit.
sarojmoh1 4y ago
Impressive! How long did it take to write. You seem to have a ton of integrations?
- bko 4y ago
  If you're thinking about doing this I would recommend doing it by hand for a while to understand the intricacies of the market and pricing dynamics. Only after that can you think about automating some of the stuff. It still may not be worth it because the cost of mistakes is high, development time could be long and honestly it might just be easier to eyeball and keep track of prices and inventory than putting in all that upfront work. In my experience you have to be very confident and experienced to automate something like that with real money at stake.
xnorswap 4y ago
So you're a ticket scalper? That's nothing something to be proud of. You say your friends detest resale sites but it sounds like you just became one yourself unless I'm misunderstanding what was happening here.
- culturestate 4y ago
  Scalpers don’t typically sell tickets for less than face value.
  - xnorswap 4y ago
    Nor is OP if you take their 20% discount into account. Scalping tickets designed to be heavily discounted for fans, then re-selling them to anyone for profit is scummy even if the price still comes under the non-fan price. At best you're just denying other fans the chance to get discounts for your own profit.
    - culturestate 4y ago
      OP bought one set of season tickets to their favorite baseball team, went to the games they wanted to see, and sold tickets to the games they didn’t want to attend to other fans for less than face value and (presumably) without the outrageous fees that you’d pay at Ticketmaster, et al. Every casual season ticket holder does this, but most of us don’t systematize it - we just send messages to our group chats, and if nobody wants the tickets for that game then the seats stay empty. There’s absolutely nothing scummy or untoward about OP’s approach.
      - xnorswap 4y ago
        Perhaps I'm mis-reading the plural here, but how many season tickets do you consider a "set"? Given OP bragged about seeing "6-7 games for FREE", it implies a lot of profit was made on the rest of the re-sold tickets. There's a big difference between being a season ticket holder and buying multiple season tickets for the purpose of reselling and subsidising your own ticket.

tailspin2019 4y ago

> wrote an electron app to auto-price and market those tickets under face value Could you elaborate on this a little? I think I can imagine, but am curious to hear a bit more about how this worked!

MattyMc 4y ago
For sure. Generally, the electron app would pull face value prices and availability from [baseballteam].com, current resale prices from hubstub.com (<- changing name) and stick them into a mini database (object store). From there, I could use these snapshots to track sales across the resale site, determine a fair value for my tickets, and estimate the probability of it selling (by comparing ticket availability between days on the resale site). Next, I had collected a list of email addresses from friends and a few posts on Facebook and Craigslist. The app had a button create/update a Google sheet with games/prices, pull in the emails, and batch email people (in groups of <50) the information along with the games. The manual part was marking the games as sold in the sheet, tracking etransfers and sending tickets, but it was little work.
- tailspin2019 4y ago
  Very cool :)

tiffanyh 4y ago

This sounds more like an algorithm to maximize your benefit from the $15k you spent. As opposed to a "money making business". (Still very cool though).

mathgeek 4y ago
Curious: at what volume would you consider an individual buying products in bulk and then reselling them individually to be a side business?
- lobocinza 4y ago
  Dropshipping?
MattyMc 4y ago
Fair point, and thanks :) The way I think of it is more of taking advantage of an arbitrage (~20% discount on season tickets to face value). Instead of selling all the tickets to earn ~$2k each year, we kept and used the tickets to our benefit.

sarojmoh1 4y ago

Impressive! How long did it take to write. You seem to have a ton of integrations?

bko 4y ago
If you're thinking about doing this I would recommend doing it by hand for a while to understand the intricacies of the market and pricing dynamics. Only after that can you think about automating some of the stuff. It still may not be worth it because the cost of mistakes is high, development time could be long and honestly it might just be easier to eyeball and keep track of prices and inventory than putting in all that upfront work. In my experience you have to be very confident and experienced to automate something like that with real money at stake.

xnorswap 4y ago

So you're a ticket scalper? That's nothing something to be proud of. You say your friends detest resale sites but it sounds like you just became one yourself unless I'm misunderstanding what was happening here.

culturestate 4y ago
Scalpers don’t typically sell tickets for less than face value.
- xnorswap 4y ago
  Nor is OP if you take their 20% discount into account. Scalping tickets designed to be heavily discounted for fans, then re-selling them to anyone for profit is scummy even if the price still comes under the non-fan price. At best you're just denying other fans the chance to get discounts for your own profit.
  - culturestate 4y ago
    OP bought one set of season tickets to their favorite baseball team, went to the games they wanted to see, and sold tickets to the games they didn’t want to attend to other fans for less than face value and (presumably) without the outrageous fees that you’d pay at Ticketmaster, et al. Every casual season ticket holder does this, but most of us don’t systematize it - we just send messages to our group chats, and if nobody wants the tickets for that game then the seats stay empty. There’s absolutely nothing scummy or untoward about OP’s approach.
    - xnorswap 4y ago
      Perhaps I'm mis-reading the plural here, but how many season tickets do you consider a "set"? Given OP bragged about seeing "6-7 games for FREE", it implies a lot of profit was made on the rest of the re-sold tickets. There's a big difference between being a season ticket holder and buying multiple season tickets for the purpose of reselling and subsidising your own ticket.