Shea Seats (Discounted Price)

[Gwreck]

Apparently the Mets have stopped selling them at the price of $900+ (that's $869 plus tax and shipping). These had been available on Mets.com for the past few years. I just couldn't justify the price.

However, you can now get pairs of seats for $600 on eBay, from the company that removed them from the stadium. Sounds like they still have a bunch sitting around the warehouse. They are $600, no tax, free shipping. Check it out: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220695459213

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Warehouse rent for 20,000+ seats can't be cheap. Do I hear $400? $300?

[Gwreck]

A while ago, I tried to figure out exactly how many seats they really had for sale. Remember that for every pair of seats they sold, one seat had to go unused because of the brackets they had in common between them. This was a particular factor with the orange seats, given how many were in rows of 4, meaning that only 2 of each 4 got sold.

My guess is that they had maybe 15,000 pairs of seats total to sell, and they probably sold most of them right at the beginning of sales. I don't imagine they have a ton left over.

[batmagadanleadoff]

As a Mets memorabilia collector, I knew all along that the Shea seats were overpriced. I thought that in the past, the charm in owning stadium seats was due to the fact that most of the seats were destroyed and that relatively few people thought to obtain a seat. Ebbets Field and The Polo Grounds and even Yankee Stadium I were torn down when collecting baseball memorabilia was a fringe hobby. Fan interest in owning a stadium seat was a fraction of what it is today.

But with Shea, and most of the other stadiums that were torn down recently in the midst of today's memorabilia craze, most of the seats were purposely preserved to be sold to collectors. With tens and tens of thousands of seats available, I knew that the original selling prices for those seats wouldn't hold.

I picked up a Shea turnstile about a year ago. I think that the turnstile is way cooler than a seat. And as far as scarcity goes, there can't be more than two, maybe two and a half dozen turnstiles in existence. If that many.

[Gwreck]

I guess it depends why you want the item. Is it cool to have because it's scarce? Or is it cool to have because it's a tangible reminder of precious memories?

[batmagadanleadoff]

Gwreck wrote: I guess it depends why you want the item. Is it cool to have because it's scarce? Or is it cool to have because it's a tangible reminder of precious memories?

That's a fair point. But it wasn't my intent to disparage anybody who may have purchased a Shea seat. I only wanted to note that I knew that the original offering price for those seats wouldn't hold.

[Gwreck]

Didn't think you were disparaging. My biggest frustration with the seats was that there were more seats than there were purchasers, yet the price was jacked up artificially high and there was no real way for a market correction to happen, especially because the seats were sold under the guise that the money went to charity. I just wanted some seats, and I could've swung $500 at the time, maybe, but close to $1000 (once the tax and shipping were added on) was just excessive for me. Fortunately there's a second chance now.

[Guest themetfairy]

I actually get use out of the Shea seats. They're mounted on the first base side of my patio, balancing out the Veterans Stadium seats on the third base side. They come in handy during cookouts, parties, etc.

But most people are too sane to do that kind of thing....

[Lefty Specialist]

We've got a pair of the blue seats. I mounted them on on wooden 'feet' so they wouldn't tip over, and we have them perfectly positioned to watch baseball all summer. Lots more legroom now than there was at Shea.

When we got them, we noticed that they were seats 15 and 16. #16 was indicated normally, with a riveted metal number tag. But #15 was a silver sticker over where the number had obviously fallen off. Well, for $869, I raised a little hell, and a few days later we got a genuine #15 that I riveted into place.