Comic-Con International in San Diego for 2009 has nearly sold out of the 4-day passes for attendees, having been on sale for less than a month. Comic-Con (formerly “San Diego Comic Con”) is generally considered to be “the” pop culture event of the year. While there are plenty of one-day passes available for sale on the site (for Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday), those will likely sell briskly once the full passes are gone.
Registration is available online-only, which can be done at ComicCon.org:
I believe last year was the first year that they completely did away with on-site sale of passes for admission, so if you miss an opportunity to buy at the direct price and decide to attend last minute, it may be anywhere from costly to impossible. As an example, last year I did not realize that registration was online-only and missed out. I was able to buy a second-hand pass on eBay for $275 (the direct price is $75), and was not able to confirm that it was even transferable until I was at the show to check-in.
In any event, based on the status bar on the Comic-Con.org website, I would expect the 4-day passes to be sold out within a week, if not in a matter of days:
I believe that there will be many events of interest to original prop collectors at the show this year. To quote from the L.A. Times leading up to last years event (see Comic-Con is bursting at the seams):
“Comic-Con has become the single most relevant event for the movie industry now. All you have to do to see that is to look at the films that are successful right now, and it’s all comic-book event movies,” said Jon Favreau, the director of the hit film “Iron Man.” “Last year, before we went to Comic-Con, nobody was talking about ‘Iron Man,’ but by the end of our presentation to those 6,500 fans [in the main hall] they were sending instant messages and writing blog posts, and we instantly had a buzz around the world.”
Jason De Bord
Jason DeBord, Original Prop Blog