Star Wars, and the nature of forethought when selling tickets

For the most part, merchants don't care who buys their product, or how, or why, as long as they sell them.

Classic case in point. Yesterday at the local Carmike Cinemas, people stood in line for hours, waiting for the 135 tickets available for the first showing in Morgantown of "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith". The second person in line bought 60. In four minutes there was a complete sell out and dozens of people who had stood in line for hours had to either settle for another showing, or go home empty handed.

I do not know if the person who bought the 60 was doing so for a large group of friend, or to scalp them - but most places I've been to, especially if it is a hot ticket, limit the number of single purchases to avoid this very thing. Of course, where do you set the line? If you set it at two, what about families with children or couples double dating? If you set it at four, what about larger families (or triple-dating or group-dating situations?) And, if you set it at 10 or 12, the scalpers (they've got it down to a rhythm...drive near the stadium on game day for a WVU Mountaineer football game and see a handful of guys with hand-fans of tickets, scalping on the corners...where do you think they get them? Yep, someone bought them) just pay some guy (or they themselves) to stand in line and buy the max available.

Think. You pay $7.50 each for 60 tickets, that comes to 450.00. Let's say you place an ad in the paper, or just stand out front an hour before the movie and sell them for 20 bucks (those people who stood on line yesterday, many would be willing to pay twenty)...that's $1,200.00 or almost a tripling of your money for what had to be a tough three or four hours standing in line and a slight risk of prosecution (although I do not know if scalping movie tickets is against any law in West Virginia). Having been a drug counselor for middle school kids in California for two years, I understand the commerce of black market product. We don't need crank or crack in this state, just give us more movie opening days and the drug dealers will all switch to ticket scalping.

Of course this assumes that this person was a scalper. I am sure whatever his cause, he stood in line, chuckling to himself at the folly of people who got there only three hours before the tickets went on sale, knowing he was buying almost half of the tickets (or even if uncertain of the number going on sale, enough to make sure that many of the people who had made their sacrifice to be there, made it in vain)

Hey, where's a Jedi knight to enforce common decency when you need one?

One of the reasons I generally don't go to opening days is that the movie will still be there in a day or two, opening day crowds are generally the most obnoxious, and I am actually there to see the movie (hey, I am currently living in a state where the people at least do not tend to talk during films, like they did in Missisippi when I was there briefly...aigh...here, they just all seem to be wearing ballcaps (which look dumb enough to start with, but wearing a hat indoors is still a sign of bad social skills...hats on men are to be removed at the door). Want to go see a movie? See it in Los Angeles. It's an industry town and they show the proper reverence, much as people genuflect at coal trucks and sports coaches here.

Enough on that, busy day ahead. Caffeine, must have caffeine.