A great NY Times article on the vanishing baseball hard ticket

[RichardSimon]

With quotes from Ken Goldin also.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/03/sports/baseball/as-bar-codes-replace-tickets-something-is-lost-before-the-first-pitch.html?_r=0

[RTK]

So true, I have containers full of tickets from the many games I've attended. Yesterday I bought tickets online for the day's Cubs / Miami game at Wrigley. I could have printed them at home but opted for real tickets at "Will Call".

[jb217676]

Whenever I go to a game I always get the printed tickets. Printing your own or using a smartphone just seems so cold. In the future, someones kid will be given a stack of 8.5" x 11" sheets with barcodes and say WTF dad!

[rsn1661]

I hate having to print my own tickets, but just had a worse experience. My wife and I took my daughter to the horseshoe in Columbus Ohio for the Buckey Country Superfest with Luke Bryan, Kenny Chesney, Keith Urban Rascal Flatts and several other acts. For whatever reason we couldn't get the order to go through on our computer, so I suggested we just go to Wal Mart and get them. When the csr handed them to us it was just printed on that cheap receipt paper that lets the ink disappear if you let sunlight get to them. The woman even told us we needed to put them in an envelope and put them in a cool dark place until the show. When we got home I copied them so my daughter would have something to put in her scrapbook other than a blank piece of paper.

I don't understand the ticket companies "Service Charge" when you print your own tickets. Where is the service? Another thing, if you have any of these receipt paper tickets be sure to bring a ziplock bag, because if they get wet they turn to mulch and you get to spend the day in the parking lot listening to the game on the radio.

My rant is over now, I feel better.

[Butch7999]

Just as bad if not worse: the single "credit card" ticket used for all games that some teams now issue to season-ticket holders.
Good luck trying to transfer your season-ticket seat for a single game to someone else if you're just one season-ticket holder
among a block of seats all of which are registered under the account of whomever is the block "captain."

[mcgwirecom]

I collect Bryce Harper and Mike Trout homerun tickets. When I started a few years ago tickets were easy to get. Season ticket holders would sell their tickets on StubHub and still have the hard tickets in hand. they would sell these to the collectors. Kind of double dipping, selling them twice. Everyone was happy. But in 2014 several teams didn't print season tickets. They just gave the season ticket holders credit cards to use. So now there are a few teams that do not have season tickets. So you either have to hope someone walks up to the box office and buys one for the game then puts it on Ebay to sell. Or you buy one yourself to make sure you have one. then another problem arises, some teams will not mail you a ticket! If you buy online they want to send you an electronic ticket. If you call on the phone they will only leave it at will call. So you need to get someone to go pick it up for you! Plus some teams will send you a crappy Ticketbastard ticket when you order online, they only have nice box office tickets at the box office. So to say covering myself for all the games this year has been difficult to say the least!

[bigfanNY]

Well The Yankees are still one of the teams that print season tickets and pretty nice ones. But in 2009 I did not have a package so got most of my tickets from stub hub that year including Game two of the World Series. And I did not like the experience of printing out my ticket for the game. For a bunch of games where I had a self printed ticket I was able to pick up a stub from the ground or folks would leave them next to their seats but not the WS game had to go to ebay to get a hard ticket (But found one a few rows away from where we sat). Now The Yankees use Ticket now as their primary resale site so when I get tickets for extra games I prefer Stub hub because season ticket holders often sell hard tickets and send via UPS. Love the Stub sorry to see it going away.

[bigfanNY]

Well The Yankees are still one of the teams that print season tickets and pretty nice ones. But in 2009 I did not have a package so got most of my tickets from stub hub that year including Game two of the World Series. And I did not like the experience of printing out my ticket for the game. For a bunch of games where I had a self printed ticket I was able to pick up a stub from the ground or folks would leave them next to their seats but not the WS game had to go to ebay to get a hard ticket (But found one a few rows away from where we sat). Now The Yankees use Ticket now as their primary resale site so when I get tickets for extra games I prefer Stub hub because season ticket holders often sell hard tickets and send via UPS. Love the Stub sorry to see it going away.