Well, catch 22. If they let anyone with a ticket order a print in a stadium of 20,000 people, then they become less limited and therefor a less valuable investment. Then they don’t sell as many because you can’t make a profit. Then the poster game is over.

A thriving secondary market is the goal with collectibles these posters. I never bat an eyelash when TOOL raises the price of their merch every tour because I know people will pay WAY more and I’d rather see the band get a bigger cut. Tool has BY FAR the most expensive face value prices and they’re still selling 100 prints per min.

Personally I love the hype. Im not a flipper, or a trader even. I’ve just been buying show posters since 2007 and I kind of like what it’s turned into. For what once was an easy score I now show up early. I enjoy waiting in line with my friends and meeting other fans. I enjoy the random scramble. The rush. The extra effort and attention the band have been putting into it mirroring the growth in interest among the fans. They used to feel like postcards from a concert... now they feel like trophies.

I feel like there’s 2 solutions, if there even needs to be one.
My least favorite is the band ups the price of posters to $300. If that’s what people are willing to pay, then the band/artist should get the money and the serious collectors can have their game.
The other option that wouldn’t price out trophy collectors and flippers, but might help with the casual merch shoppers: offer the typical run of high-end limited art prints, but also offer some cheaper tour-long prints with maybe a few color variants that you wouldn’t know until you opened it or something. Print thousands of them.

I just imagine Adam reading all the insufferable hubbub going on in the poster community about how “the band needs to do something”... meanwhile remembering he and his wife’s prints sitting for sale on the website for MONTHS after the tours had ended.

I hope he whispers to himself “suck it, r-tards. Send more money.”