A ticket for sale on craigslist.org to the Black Tie & Boots Inaugural Ball.
For once the hottest tickets around have nothing to do with sports or a rock concert. The Internet is buzzing with talk about the tickets to the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president. Despite the fact that those tickets will not be handed out until a few days before for the January 20, 2009 ceremony.
There’s a reminder that the tickets to the swearing in ceremony are free and a warning about buying tickets from scalpers on the government’s official inaugural website. Even so, I really doubt anything will cool off the demand or put a stop to the under cover wheeling and dealing of these tickets. The historic value of the inauguration and the events surrounding it are just too high.
I checked one major Internet source yesterday, craigslist.org, in Washington, D.C. There were some buyers and sellers for the swearing in ceremony, but I was surprised by the number of tickets being offered for the inaugural balls. For those galas the prices ranged from a few hundred up to $5,000 for two tickets being offered by a woman who says she and her husband cannot make the trip to D.C. for the festivities.
The inauguration ceremony is 70 days away. I suspect the closer we get to January 20 — the hotter the market will get for a ticket to history.
