Ticket Prices Skyrocket For Final Grateful Dead Concerts

By Chuck Sudo in Arts & Entertainment on Mar 3, 2015 5:10PM

The Grateful Dead's Phil Lesh (left) and Bob Weir performing with Warren Haynes in 2009. (Photo by Cory Schwartz/Getty Images)

Did you miss out on your chance to get tickets to The Grateful Dead’s final concerts at Soldier Field in July? If you have the passion and, more importantly the money, you can still buy tickets for the July 3-5 shows on the secondary market.

Three-day passes for the Dead’s “Fare Thee Well” shows, according to secondary market aggregator Tiqiq, range from over $2,100 each to nearly $24,000 a head. Front row seats to a single show are selling for over $8,000. At those prices, some Deadheads will have to choose between patchouli and blotter acid, at the very least.

Someone on Stubhub posted two 3-day passes for $116,000, which is wishful thinking even by ticket broker standards. The secondary market is the only way for fans who missed out on the original ticket sales to gain entry into Soldier Field. When the tickets went on sale last month at Ticketmaster, over 500,000 fans were waiting to buy them and the demand crashed Ticketmaster’s website. The Grateful Dead Fan Club received over 60,000 requests for tickets before they went on sale. Scores upon scores of those requests arrived in hand-painted envelopes like the one pictured below.

The Dead are ending their career at Soldier Field 20 years after they played their final shows there with their late bandleader, Jerry Garcia.