TELUS World Ski & Snowboard Festival

What's a ticket to Olympus Pro Photographer Showdown worth?

The value of a ticket to the Pro Photographer Showdown? 

Recommended retail : $20.

1500 seats sold out in record time this year, opening room for a Black Market trade that has really probed the question.

Street value of a sold-out Pro Photographer Showdown ticket?

There have been offers of people's children. (Perhaps an evil ploy for free babysitting?)  And plenty of would-be scalpees have been waving fistloads of cash.

But the #BlackMarketPhoto experiment has really put some quanitifiables into play.

We put two VIP tickets into the hands of Mike Berard, Amber Turnau, Mike Douglas, Rebecca Bollwitt and Dano Pendygrasse, inviting them to trade for whatever we could get. The successful barterers can then try and trade the tickets up again (a la One Red Paper Clip - could they be up-traded for a house in Saskatchewan? If a paperclip could, then surely 2 tickets to the Olympus Pro Photographer Showdown could get you there...)

Or the marketeers could take the tickets and enjoy the best seats in the house at the Showdown April 22nd.

Interestingly, noone is just sitting on them for themselves.

Mike Berard kicked things off with a trade with Voleurz for a hoodie. 

The Voleurz crew now has two tickets to trade if you want some. Go bug them on the Voleurz Twitter page.

As for the other ticket traders, photographer Dano Pendygrasse traded his tickets in exchange for a $150 donation to the Paul Brunes Young Heart Foundation by Colin Gilliam. Gilliam donated the proceeds from the sale of a print of his work. Here's how that little trade went down:

@mikedski @danopendygrasse @amberturnau @voleurz @miss604 lookin' for some #blackmarketphoto tix.. how bout a print from colingilliam.com ??

@ColinGilliam sell something and donate the proceeds to charity and you've got a deal.

Pro photo Tix Going, going...#blackmarketphoto RT @ColinGilliam: next piece of art I sell from my website I will donate proceeds to charity

@ColinGilliam Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. #blackmarket photo. Donating to Paul Brunes Young Heart Foundation #wssf

Whistler blogger Amber Turnau traded hers to Gay Whistler’s CEO Dean Nelson for a mysterious package of “Island Magic”, the contents of which no one but Mr. Nelson seems to know consists of…I have my guesses.

Skiing legend and Olympus Pro Photographer Showdown host Mike Douglas traded his for a tenderloin and prawn dinner with wine pairings (an Okanagan Pinot Gris and a Chilean Carmenere) cooked by Biglines.com’s Tim Grey.

Biglines: I'll cook an amazing jumbo prawn and tenderloin feast for 2 tickets. Think turn key date night. #BlackMarketPhoto kitchen must be supplied.

As you can see the tickets are going fast so if you’re still scrambling for tickets to the best event of the Festival, get on Twitter right now, search #BlackMarketPhoto and hassle Miss 604 herself, Rebecca Bollwitt, or the boys at Voleurz for the last four.

Miss 604 is going to decide her trade on April 14 - so ante up.

Or see if you can lure them away from any of the other ticket holders. After all, there are no rules in the black market…

Let us know what they're worth...