Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? It is. But you can buy HAMILTON tickets for the upcoming made-for-Chicago engagement at the newly christened PrivateBank Theatre – right now – starting around $450 and topping out at that whopping $1208. You can get them at an attractive website named chicago-theater.com. It’s a flashy, professional site, with a friendly interface, seating maps, credit card security badges and the like, and tickets to lots of the major shows going on in Chicago. One would almost think that it’s a licenced ticket seller for presenting organization Broadway in Chicago if they missed the small disclaimer: “We are a resale marketplace, not the ticket seller. Prices are set by third-party sellers and may be above face value.” Another word for that is scalping. Yep. 6 months from the premiere of HAMILTON in Chicago, scalpers are already trying to profit on tickets in the secondary market. A quick search of StubHub will nab you HAMILTON tickets anywhere from $757 to $1150. At least StubHub is obviously a re-sale site. The catch is, Broadway in Chicago hasn’t put individual tickets on-sale for HAMILTON yet.

So how do these sites already have tickets? Well, that’s an excellent question, and to find the answer, you have to look at the details of how you get your tickets after the purchase. On chicago-theater.com, it states in subtle print on the purchase page that “Tickets will be ready for delivery by Sep 26, 2016.” And – you don’t get to choose your actual seats, just the section where they will be located. They even say the seats may be obstructed view! Why would that be? Well – there are two possibilities: 1) They are speculating. They will hope to buy up a ton of tickets when they go on sale and hope they can get enough to cover the orders that have been placed – OR – 2) they have bought group tickets, which went on sale several few weeks ago. This puts the buyer in dangerous territory. Broadway in Chicago does not allow group tickets to be re-sold. Generally, a deposit is required in advance and once the purchaser collects all the money from their “group” they pay the balance and receive their tickets. But, if Broadway in Chicago catches someone trying to re-sell group tickets at a premium, they may cancel the order – leaving the scalper and the end purchaser hanging.

So what will single tickets actually cost? We don’t know that yet – but if you take into consideration the cost of full-price tickets for HAMILTON in New York, Most will be well under $200, many even under $100. Broadway in Chicago hasn’t announced when single tickets will go on sale, but if you really want to get your HAMILTON tickets now, consider a Broadway in Chicago season subscription, which includes THE BODYGUARD, ALADDIN, THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME, HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH, and HAMILTON for between $132 and $565 – way less than anyone is paying for a ticket to HAMILTON in New York these days.