I was going on a business trip to Los Angeles so I hit up my soccer “ticket pimp” Ed Derse for tickets to the Argentina vs. Guatemala game at the LA Coliseum. Normally Derse finds out he has extra tickets at the last possible moment – which is normally not a concern since I always end up buying tickets from scalpers outside the stadium.

However, for this game, my mom was in town. Normally I would still buy tickets outside the stadium with her but a number of factors made me consider buying tickets ahead of time.

1) I prefer not to scalp tickets outside of the LA Coliseum with my mom or wife.
2) Tickets at the LA Coliseum box office are at least $5 more than if buying ahead of time.
3) As I wrote on January 7, I still had $106.65 worth of Ticketmaster gift certificates available.
4) Derse did not think he could come through with tickets.
5) I had a meeting up until the time I needed to leave for the game.

Thus, I bought two tickets on Ticketmaster (using the gift certificates) for $69.30 before my meeting. I figured I would spend at least $60 at the stadium so the extra $9.30 was worth the convenience.

When I got back from my meeting, Derse had IM’d me at 4:45 pm that he had received two free tickets for the game. Of course! So I left the office knowing I needed to sell the two tickets I had bought off Ticketmaster.

We paid $20 to park in the close lot at the LA Coliseum and walked over to Will Call. We picked up the Ticketmaster tickets first and then went to pick up the tickets Derse had got us. Much to our surprise, Derse’s tickets were in the press box! I had not been in a press box since the Ultimate Sports Wife and I had attended a game in Rome that the “ticket pimp” had also got us.

We ended up selling the Ticketmaster tickets for $30 each ($60 total) and probably could have made more. The entire General Admission section was full.

In the press box, we received free dinner and did not have to sit out in a “cold” LA winter night.