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Hamilton Las Vegas – Huge Wins & Big Losses

Ticket reselling can be lucrative, but it can also be very stressful. In the past we have shared some of our successes and failures when it comes to hawking tickets. Sometimes a lot of work and research can go into getting the perfect tickets to resell and sometimes external factors kill your opportunity no matter how much work you have done. Then, sometimes you just get lucky.

Hamilton has been a show that has made a lot of people money. Reselling Hamilton tickets has been very lucrative, but the show has been around a few years and has also been making it to more and more cities. Still, there is some opportunity. Enter Hamilton Las Vegas.

Buying Season Tickets

About a year ago I made a calculated move. I could purchase season tickets to The Smith Center’s Broadway in Las Vegas Series for a decent price. By the time I came up with this plan only balcony (bad) seats were left, but I still took the plunge. I purchased 4 balcony seats for 7 shows (including Hamilton) for a total cost of $1,010 or $252.50 per seat.

Selling the Season Tickets

Over the course of the year, we used the tickets a couple of times, sold some of them for a modest profit and sold others for a small loss. The key takeaway is that if the Hamilton tickets didn’t sell well, then I would be out some money. This was a risk too, since my seats were towards the back of the balcony. Nosebleed to say the least. Here is what the view looked like when we saw Rent.

Hamilton on Sale

One interesting thing about the way they did ticketing for Hamilton is the timing. Season ticket holders got their tickets late last year, while the tickets didn’t go on sale to the general public until April.

This meant:

The only people who had tickets to sell early were season ticket holders

These people were more likely to want to use their tickets to see this hot show

Only tickets for the first week of shows (season ticket shows) were available

Very few tickets were for sale on Stubhub because most people were using them

In fact, for my Sunday evening performance, there were only a few sets of tickets. Some people wanted $1,200 for their Orchestra level seats and then there was me. I struggled with where to price, but ultimately decided on $499. And then the tickets sat…..and sat…..

After awhile I lowered my price to $479.89 and then in February, I got this amazing email!

How exciting! Those two tickets almost paid for the entire season ticket package. But I still had two more to sell. I immediately raised the price of my other two tickets to $550 and they sat for a couple of weeks. Since the public sale was coming up, I decided to drop back to $499.89 and boom! They sold quickly.

Counting the Profit

This turned out incredibly well. We got to see a couple of shows and just on the Hamilton tickets alone we made a $753.60 profit. We were in and out before the majority of the tickets were on sale to the public. And that turned out to be a very very very very good thing.

Hamilton Las Vegas Tanking

I remember the day when Hamilton Las Vegas tickets went on sale to the public. I saw the prices and decided to stay away from buying them. It didn’t matter anyway since the ticket website was slammed and I saw a number of friends/family complaining about not being able to get tickets. Demand seemed to be through the roof. Indeed there was a lot of demand, but not apparently from people going to see the show.

The past couple of weeks I have been tracking Hamilton Las Vegas prices since I wanted to take some of that profit and see the show in much better seats than I sold. First, there is a TON of inventory. Second, prices are terrible. For example, seats better than the ones I sold in the balcony section are commonly selling for $80-100.

The cheapest seat I have seen is $44. This seat is 4 rows in front of the ones I sold! Ouch!

Upgrading My Seats

Since Hamilton Las Vegas runs for four weeks, I have been trying to decide when to buy tickets. I don’t have a great desire to sit in the balcony, but I don’t want to spend too much either. I have seen back Orchestra seats drop to about $200 including fees, but I decided to wait.

Then, last night some front row Box Tier seats opened up for $94 each. After fees and using an Amex Offer, my final cost was $113 per ticket. (Stubhub fees are no joke!) These boxes are fairly close to the stage and since we are in the front, we should have a decent view. Not as good as being Front Orchestra, but better than even Rear Orchestra in my opinion. And what a price! (I believe what I paid is significantly less than face value.)

Conclusion

Sometimes you just get lucky. This is one of those cases where timing was everything. In the end, I made about $500, upgraded my Hamilton seats and saw a couple of other shows. I’ll put this one in the win column, but I suspect for the vast majority of ticket resellers, it was a loser.