Hours before the Yankees opened their World Series homestand against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Monday, tickets ranged from $724 to $16,185 on resale giant StubHub.

Those were asking prices, not necessarily sales, and ticket prices seemed to have dropped with the Yankees’ fortunes after they lost the first two games of the series. But to get into a full stadium for the Yankees’ first home game in the World Series since 2009, most fans had to pay dearly.

The low end rose to $992 including fees and didn’t actually buy a seat; instead, it purchased a Pinstripe Pass, which granted access to “non-designated standing room only locations through the stadium” or to a number of “social gathering locations,” according to the Major League Baseball website. The website sternly noted that Pinstripe Pass holders are “not allowed to occupy ticketed seats,” cafe seats, or portable folding chairs.

The high-end, which came to $21,854 with fees, bought a spot in the sports paradise: Row 2, Section 18 of the Legends Suite, “curated for those who demand the best in baseball.”

Plush, but pricey

For the price of a decent used car, or roughly three years of tuition at a SUNY college, fans in a Legends Suite got a real seat near the Yankees dugout – nicely cushioned – with perks like the use of a private entrance for the stadium and everything. including food and non-alcoholic drinks. It was possible for a Legends suite guest to get a hot dog, but that probably wasn’t easy, as the photo gallery on the MLB website shows: all the free cupcakes, steak, sushi and stone crab claws would get in the way.

Ticket marketplace Vivid Seats estimates the average ticket price sold for the game at $1,682, the highest of the series to date. During the game, another marketplace said in a news release Monday afternoon, the start of the Yankees’ 0-2 series meant ticket prices at the stadium “cracked,” with the lowest cost dropping from $1,745 last Wednesday to $854 Monday and top-priced tickets have fallen from more than $27,000 last week to $16,167.

Monday night in the Bronx, there were a few fans, like Elbi Cho, 49, a Mets-loving used car salesman from Queens, waiting for the game to start and for resale market prices to drop. He refused to pay more than a few hundred dollars. “This is not my team,” he said outside Yankee Stadium as game time approached.

Most people cheerfully said they had spent thousands.

“I paid $6,000 a ticket and bought five,” said Mark Lauber, a New Jersey resident who came with his sons and their girlfriends. “I’ve been to three World Series when the Yankees won and you can’t put a price on it. It’s so exciting. It’s something I’ll never forget – I was at the ’77 World Series when Reggie Jackson won three at home beat. runs… You can’t put a price on it.’

Once in a lifetime

Jose and Alma Hernandez, Dodgers fans from Orange County, California, each paid $2,200 for seats in the press box behind home plate.

“We decided along the way — we’ve been married for 24 years — that we’re going to give each other experiences,” said Jose Hernandez, 50, a lawyer. He and Alma Hernandez, 51, a judge, watch baseball during spring training and sometimes buy season tickets, he said. A series like this, like Halley’s Comet, can only happen once in a lifetime.

“We’re not going to see another series like this,” he said. But: “There is always a limit. I don’t know what it is now, but there is always a limit.”

Joanne Carducci, the social media personality JoJoFromJerz, said she paid $3,200 for tickets for herself and her 15-year-old son Leo.

“I’ve been taking my kids to Yankees games since 2019, since I first got separated from their dad and couldn’t afford tickets at all,” she said. “I had to sit in the clouds on the 400’s and it was so high I got scared. I promised myself I would be low in a very short time, and I worked and worked, and five years later, I’m with my son at the World Series.”

Leo said, “We came all the way here, and it’s amazing.”

In the Ford Field MVP seats, not far from the field but above the Legends area, Elliott Kreppel, 56, a tax agency owner from Monroe Township, New Jersey, said he did not know how much his tickets had cost, and that it didn’t really matter. He was coming with his son, Jake, 25.

“Money comes and goes, but memories are forever.” Also: He’s in Legends during the regular season, and the free food “after a while it’s too much… the lobster, it’s just too much.”