by Dreamer Writer

Created on: July 27, 2008   Last Updated: November 24, 2008

Attention all NASCAR fans! The Daytona 500 is just around the corner and tickets are already sold out. A bunch of your friends are going and have invited you to come on the road trip and come camping with them on the race grounds, but you need to find your own ticket to the race. Daytona Raceway announced months ago that tickets are already sold out so now what can you do?

Obviously you are going to have to buy tickets from someone else that is willing to part with theirs. This becomes a scary and tricky situation as a buyer. How do you protect yourself to make sure that you are not only paying a fair price but also assured that you are getting real tickets that will be accepted at the front gate of the track? Here are a few things you need to consider when buying second hand tickets.

The first thing to consider in this situation is that you should never plan to buy tickets from someone standing in front of the event offering to sell you discounted tickets to the race. These scalpers are committing a crime and they are not going to be valid tickets to the event. Avoid this altogether.

Next you should check in your local newspaper for classified ads from people in your area that may have bought tickets but later found out that they could not make it to the race. This will be your best bet for finding real tickets at a fair price. At the very least, in this case you can meet the buyer at some neutral location and touch the tickets to see that they are real and valid before you pay for them.

If that method does not work, your next step is to find a hobby shop dealer either locally our online. In some cases, these shops like to buy tickets to a major event like this and resell them after the event has sold out to make a profit reselling them. I would expect that the prices for these tickets will be a good amount over ticket face value, but again you could inspect the ticket for validity.
If you have exhausted all of these options and you still have not found your tickets, you have one other option to consider. You are sure to find a bunch of profit seekers on Internet auction sites such as eBay that are selling their tickets. There is however a big catch to buying these tickets online. While eBay policies require that the ticket only be sold for a maximum of $1.00 over face value, they do not limit the fees that can be added into the shipping and handling costs. This means that the seller can charge face value for the ticket but then charge $150 for shipping the ticket. While this process is not ethical, the seller knows that with millions of people on eBay looking for the last tickets available, someone will be willing to overlook the rules to make sure they get to the event.

A final word of advice, plan ahead. If you wanted to go to the event this year and had no luck, make a point to buy the tickets to next years events as soon as they are available. Worst case scenario, if you can not go next year, you can always sell it later in the season.

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