First things first: There is
NO SUCH THING as Face "value" unless the event is cancelled. Why? The
venue ticketing agent (i.e., Ticketmaster, etc.) will not issue a refund to you,
and you can't cash it in like a savings bond, so if there is a very small chance
that the event will be cancelled (most major events do not cancel without a
make-up date), or virtually no chance that the event will be cancelled (such as
the Super Bowl), then there is no way to get your money back without reselling
it on the secondary market. Therefore, the only value is the
market value, period. The term "face value" is a misnomer; the correct
term is "face price" . If you'll look on
the back of a ticket issued by a venue ticketing agency, it
will generally have the disclaimer, "NO CASH VALUE". However, if the event is cancelled, it
does have cash value, and in the same breath, they state that they will
not honor refunds, meaning that if the event goes on as planned, it has no
redeemable or refundable "cash value".
A ticket is like any other asset;
it's a commodity which is owned by the bearer of such (the seller), and can be
bartered, sold or exchanged easily (good liquidity), in much the same way that
people sell real estate, cars, jewelry, stocks, bonds, stamps or other
collectibles such as art or coins. The price on the ticket (the face price) is
stated on the ticket for a number of reasons, none of which necessarily may
affect its market value in the secondary market. The face price is the price at
which tickets will be refunded by the venue ticketing agent in case of a
cancellation of that particular event. If the face price meant anything in
relation to the market value in regards to any other negotiable commodity, the
rare coin/money and stamp market would cease to exist, as they are generally
always sold above their face prices, sometimes as much as $1,000,000.00 over
their face price in the case of certain rare stamps. And these are commodities
which are issued (in many cases) by the U.S. Government! As a matter of fact,
the U.S. Mint encourages people to collect coins in anticipation of them being
sold at a price higher than the face price at a future date.
So what does the face price
mean? Simply put, if the promoter or the venue ticketing agent will not
refund the ticket unless the event is cancelled, and there's virtually no chance
of a cancellation of a particular event, the face price means absolutely
nothing. Consider this: The face price only comes into play when the promoter of
an event offers refunds on cancelled events, so it's safe to say that
the face price means absolutely nothing unless cancellation of the event is a viable
option. Of course, The Super Bowl is virtually cancel-free, so since there is no
real possibility of a cancellation, the face price on Super Bowl tickets means
absolutely nothing. The only price that counts would be the secondary market
price, which is considerably higher than the face price in most cases, and
sometimes lower. The same can be said with virtually all major sporting events
and most all concerts by major artists.
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