Many cities around the country are reconsidering any anti-scalping legislation they have on the books (largely at the request of the event promoters who now have the technology to create their own "scalping" markets). One hundred plus years ago, the first anti-scalping laws were just being erected, primarily on aesthetic grounds.

From the Nov. 15, 1907 NYT:

NEW HAVEN, Conn. - A clash between the small army of professional ticket speculators who invade this city before the Yale football game in the Fall and the city and university authorities is expected. Mayor Studley has just signed the most drastic anti-ticket speculation ordinance which any city has adopted in New England and the speculators are said to have banded together in a determined effort to test its constitutionality.

The speculators reap a rich harvest on tickets for the Yale-Harvard and Yale-Princeton football games, which they sell for $10 to $12 apiece, buying them for their face value of $2....

The ordinance which has just gone into effect provides that every ticket to a place of amusement in New Haven shall bear upon its face the price for which it is sold, and it prescribes a fine of from $10 to $100 for selling it at a greater price. It makes the selling of every separate ticket at a price greater than the face value a separate offense.

In real terms - $2 = $44 in 2006, $10-$12 = $220-264 in 2006, $10-$100 = $220-$4400 in 2006.

The size of the fines relative to the size of the profits from scalping a ticket suggest that the authorities felt it was unlikely that they would actually catch someone scalping a ticket.

In yet another example of how times have changed, this year Harvard charges $15 for a single-game ticket (although Harvard-Yale is sold out)

As for the secondary market for Harvard-Yale, one ticket broker has tickets for $24 each.