DarkLord Day: Solve One Problem, Another Arises
By Chuck Sudo in Food on Apr 8, 2009 6:00PM
The DarkLord Days of recent years have devolved into a litany of disappointed beer fans either leaving without bottles of Three Floyd's prized Russian Imperial Stout, or being so desperate for it that they purchase bottles from some of Northwest Indiana's brightest trade school dropouts for at least three times the $15 selling price set by the brewery. The golden ticket sale announced by the brewery was a step in the right direction to give those who truly wanted the beer an opportunity to buy it. Still, it was only a matter of time before golden tickets started popping up on Craigslist and online auctions.
Three Floyds sent out Golden tickets last week and Monday. The Reader notes that's already happening. Tickets are being offered for sale on Craigslist for up to ten times the face value. A bidding on DLD tickets on ebay currently has a high bid of $14,999.44.
Coupled with some confusion from casual fans of DarkLord Day over the true purpose of the golden tickets, the brewery placed its own ad on Craigslist reminding people that they don't support scalping. Another post on the Three Floyds blog goes further:
"We don’t pretend we can tell you what to do with your personal property. Once that ticket is in your hands it’s obviously yours to do whatever you want with it. However, going out of your way to personally profit from this situation is at best scummy and worst just plain douchey."
One might suspect Three Floyds of trying to have it both ways: they recognize the scalping issue still exists, but saying it's out of their hands as a tacit way to sell the sizzle of the festival. Furthermore, the golden tickets only assure its holders of the opportunity to buy DarkLord. There is a possibility — however slight — that you could be holding a golden ticket and still not be able to buy any DarkLord. As of post time, Three Floyds hasn't set a bottle purchase limit per ticket. A brewery employee told us that limit will be set once they finish bottling DarkLord in about a week and the number will be posted to both the DarkLord Day website and brewery blog. So even the scalpers are getting ahead of themselves.
The festival itself is still free. Additionally, if you miss out on the chance to buy DarkLord, there's still other beers to buy, including the highly anticipated Popskull, brewed in collaboration with Dogfish Head.