Looking to visit Yankee Stadium one final time? Be aware, its NOT a buyer's market!

As most of the regular readers of this site know, I am a New York Yankees season ticket holder. Regrettably, I had to sell my season strip this year (FOR FACE VALUE) in order to save up for 2009 season tickets in the new Stadium.

So, here it is, July 28, and the current Yankee Stadium is down to 20-something games left in its fabled history. Unfortunately for prospective ticket buyers, that means demand is skyrocketing and prices are going with it.

I have been keeping track of the Yankee ticket market on sites like Craigs List and Stubhub for the past few years. Typically, during the dog days of summer, tickets to games against the last place team on weeknights were easy to come by. Not only that, the tickets were usually below face value if you waited long enough to purchase them and played your cards right.

I'm here to sadly report that those days are long gone. Now, the Yankees "for sale" ads on Craigs List are outnumbered by "wanted" ads - and the wanted ads are being placed by people willing to pay above face value.

Myself and fake Ian Kennedy wanted to go to a game this week, but neither of us are in a position to pay an arm and a leg for more excruciating encounters with "the typical Yankee fan", of which I have chronicled on this site ad nauseam.

For the working class Yankee fan, this is a sad time. Gone are the days of making a spur of the moment decision during an especially tedious work day to catch a cheap game in the Bronx. Gone are the days of hitting up Craigs List last minute for a pair of Tier Reserved tickets for under $20, buying a sandwich from Subway and sneaking a pre-mixed bottle of rum and coke into the stadium.

There is no telling if those simpler times will return once the hype of the new Stadium wears off. However, with the price tag approaching 1.3 billion for the new digs, my magic 8-ball does not paint a pretty picture.

Talk about it in the NYYSI Forums! Read the full post, after the jump