Giants’ “Black & Orange Friday” game tickets sell out in 18 minutes

Looks like the bandwagon fans are still on board.

The San Francisco Giants opened their box offices this morning at 10:00 to sell a “limited” number of tickets to 80 of their 81 regular season games in 2012, including tickets to the Brian Wilson Garden Gnome giveaway game, 2002 World Series Reunion game, all four Bobblehead giveaway games, and the interleague matchups against the A’s and Rangers (plus the two Bay Bridge Series preseason games).

I was one of the few to score tickets to a couple of games, but definitely not at the “advertised” price of $8 a seat. In fact, I had nine different browser windows open (one for each of the games I wanted) and I didn’t see ANY $8 tickets. The cheapest ones I saw were $15 upper reserves and those were far and few between. I had to pay $67 a seat for one game and $90 a seat for the other game…and those were the only two games I could even get into.

By 10:18, there was nothing left. I guess the 2010 World Series hangover continues. (Don’t be jealous, A’s fans. I’m sure you guys will sell a few tickets.)

I  will say this. In my opinion, there was no need for the Giants’ marketing team to advertise $8 seats. I’m sure that drove a lot of traffic to the online and offline box offices. But all “limited release” tickets gone in 18 minutes? That’s crazy.

Many Giants fans were frustrated by the whole process. According to Gina Uriarte, it was “worse than Walmart on Black Friday.” Jacob Sundstrom tweeted, “Now I’m stuck in the virtual waiting room. Screw you, SF Giants.” Another fan — Taylor Ford — said, “Figure out your ticketing system BEFORE you fill everyone’s email accounts advertising tickets.”

Interestingly, the Wednesday, May 1st game against the Mets was the only regular season contest that was NOT released for ticket sales. (I wonder what that’s all about.)

By the way, this doesn’t mean that all of the Giants’ home games are “sold out.” Like I said, the Giants only released a limited number of tickets to each of these games — exactly how many, I’m not sure.

It’s possible the Giants could slowly release even more tickets between now and Dec. 24. If not, non-season ticket holders will have to wait until Feb. 4 (FanFest) to buy single-game tix, unless they go the third-party ticket seller route (e.g., Stub Hub).