I made a mistake like that once.
A bunch of us used to get together for homecoming every other year. I had tickets, but not everybody did. Didn't matter though because homecoming was usually a bad team and tickets were easy to get. One of our friends was a former Gator Growl director so she was able to get a bunch of good tickets to homecoming every year.
Well...every once in a while, we choose LSU or Auburn or something for homecoming. 2006 was one of those years. It was LSU. The former Growl director couldn't get any extra tickets. It was a top 10 matchup...#5 UF versus #9 LSU, plus it was homecoming. No only that, but I had ANOTHER group of friends who decided to do homecoming that year, so the regular group plus another group and only a couple of us had tickets.
I was the one living in Florida, I was the one with the connections, so it was on me to find tickets.
Somehow, someway, I had to come up with some 14 extra tickets (plus the ones we already had) and try to make the price fair and try to seat people together as best I could. I called every person I knew, begged, pleaded, negotiated, cajoled. Some I got a face value, some I had to pay a lot for, regardless where they were, I averaged the cost for all (including the ones we already had) so everybody (including me) paid the same price. Then I turned into a freaking wedding planner trying to assign the tickets. Who sat with who, who got the better seats, who got into the coveted "4 together" versus the "2 together", the whole 9 yards. I didn't get the last two tickets until the morning of the game. I ran myself ragged and didn't get to enjoy homecoming weekend until everybody had their ticket in their hand.
Here's the part that sucks. I don't think anybody appreciated how difficult that process was. They just figured it was no big deal to come up with dirt cheap good seats to the biggest home game of the year. Of course we won the game (great game, including true freshman Tim Tebow's first ever jump pass for a TD) and went on the win the championship that year so it was even better in retrospect--but I'll always remember the stress and effort of trying to get those tickets for everybody.
Alex.