Joel lecture tickets become hot property for scalpers

If you did not win a ticket to Billy Joel's Tuesday lecture during the Connaissance raffle, don't despair. You could always buy one -- for $75 or more. Several students who won tickets in the raffle are now selling them over Internet newsgroups for more than 10 times the original ticket price. One post on the upenn.forsale newsgroup from College senior Jake Glaser reads, "For all you sorry folks that didn't win the tickets, I have two that I am selling? I've already been offered $175 for both!" A post by College senior Andrew Kramar on the same newsgroup says, "It is a simple matter of whoever bids the most for them, gets them." Kramar's post continued, "I have already been offered $40 apiece for them already, so let's start the bidding there (saves us both time)." Anti-scalping laws in Pennsylvania limit markups to 110 percent of the original ticket price, according to a post on upenn.forsale by Wharton senior Jim Maceiko. Therefore, the highest price the tickets could legally be sold for would be $5.50. According to Connaissance co-Director Rich Archer, a Wharton junior, scalping is something the group cannot control. "We discussed handing out the tickets later in the week but decided scalping was going to happen anyway," he explained. "The black market's going to arise no matter what we do." But in a post to upenn.forsale, Wharton junior Cyrus Mehta wrote it was "pretty damn scummy" for students to sell their tickets at such high markups. "How about giving the tickets to a couple of friends who just weren't lucky enough to get tickets, but are lucky enough to know you?" he asked. Archer said that approximately 4,000 students attempted to win tickets from Connaissance for the lecture. Of those 4,000 students, 900 won two tickets each. An additional 100 students won seats in the first 10 rows by explaining why they were Billy Joel fans. "My favorite one was by [Wharton junior] Matt Schneider," Archer said. "He wrote that his parents met at a Billy Joel concert, and he really needs to find a wife." Archer added that another entrant downloaded a baby picture of Joel off the Internet, and other students wrote top 10 lists of reasons they should be given the tickets. One student -- who won tickets in the front rows by writing an essay -- posted to alt.music.billy-joel, offering to sell her tickets. "It saddened me to see that someone who claimed to be a big Billy Joel fan would be willing to sell one of her seats," Archer said.

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