Tickets golden to see Giants in Super Bowl

Forget gold -- ticket prices to see the Giants take on the Patriots in Indianapolis Feb. 5 are spiraling off the charts. Even fans whose efforts to attend regular season games tend toward the obsessive are blinking -- almost.

"We're working on it," said John Bartlett of Levittown, who with his two sons drove to Green Bay (15 hours each way) in mid-January, then flew to San Francisco to see the Giants make it to the Super Bowl ($380 round-trip).

Prices for around 1,500 available tickets on the NFL Ticket Exchange website were priced from $2,613 to $17,048 each at midday Friday, with the high settling at $15,906 by 5 p.m.

Bartlett said he hesitated when he saw the $2,600 starting price, as well as package deals for hotel, airfare and a ticket starting at $5,840 per person. "That's too much," said Bartlett, who considers the $540-a-ticket he paid for the San Francisco tickets a bargain. "You've got to be realistic, too," he said. "There are limits."

Worse, he said, hotels within three hours of Indianapolis are sold out or priced into the stratosphere. (Travelocity found a Best Inn near the airport for $899 a night.)

But don't count Bartlett and other fans out just yet.

Mark Alagna, an electronics salesman from Ronkonkoma, said while he's been priced out of the official market, he and some friends still plan to travel to Indianapolis next week to see what might turn up. "You've got to have a laptop, a smartphone, and keep checking," he said of local ticket sellers. "I'm going to be in Indianapolis. You never give up hope."

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Bartlett said he's been told ticket scalpers in Indianapolis might be offering tickets for $400 to $500 off the $800-$1,200 face, a price he said he's willing to pay. So he's "toying with the idea" of driving the 12 hours it will take to get there on Friday night or early Saturday, and trying his luck.

"I don't mind spending $1,500 per ticket," said Bartlett, who runs a heating and air-conditioning business, "but $2,600 is ridiculous. It's more than triple the face value."

A neighbor of Bartletts took the plunge and bought two tickets at $2,600 each, and told Bartlett he plans to drive out and sleep in his car, if he has to. There, Bartlett draws the line. "I'm not sleeping in my car."

Amanda Martocci, an agent at Big Blue Travel, a Manhattan agency that books packages to Giants games, said the company sold 500 packages to the game the Sunday the Giants won the NFC Championship -- some ordered from Candlestick Park. "There were people booking the trip from their phones in the parking lot," she said.