By Internet, telephone and face-to-face haggling -- everything but an official ticket window -- access to Pittsburgh's biggest non-Steelers event in years is up for sale.

The question is: Who's buying? And for how much?

Tonight's All-Star Game is sold out, with some 38,000 tickets purchased at $125 to $285 by Pirates season-ticket holders, All-Star lottery winners, Major League Baseball's club officials and business partners, and others.

Tickets for last night's Home Run Derby were also all sold in advance, for a face value of $75 to $210.

But as with any popular sporting event, there's always a marketplace for tickets up to -- and even a little after -- the start of the game.

John Proudfoot, 25, of Squirrel Hill, understood the situation as he waited in the North Shore's sanctioned ticket reselling zone on Tony Dorsett Drive yesterday for a vendor -- and there were more than a dozen nearby -- to offer him a Home Run Derby ticket at a price he liked. At 5 p.m., the price he heard was $225. At 6 p.m., it was $100. He was inclined to wait to hear $75.

"Like any sporting event, you buy at the last minute because prices are going to drop," said Mr. Proudfoot, a sports fan wearing a Steelers cap and gold National League All-Star T-shirt. "These [sellers] don't want to eat their tickets."

Just two blocks away on Federal Street, fans were arriving on the second floor of Hi-Tops sports bar to pick up tickets they had purchased via StubHub, the online ticket marketplace through which private strangers make sales. StubHub sets up a will-call center for people buying tickets in the last few days before an event to collect them personally, instead of risking late home delivery.

Ford City High School football coach John Bartolovic spent $500 through StubHub to get two Home Run Derby tickets for himself and his son, J.J.

"It's a once-in-a-lifetime thing, not something you can do every year," Mr. Bartolovic said when picking up the tickets.

StubHub spokesman Sean Pate said hundreds of tickets were bought through its Internet site for both the All-Star Game and Home Run Derby, with the game commanding a higher price, an average of $736. More>>>

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