San Diego Comic-Con’s Open Registration Badges Sold Out In Less Than 75 Minutes

It isn't exactly news that admission to San Diego Comic Con 2014 is a hot commodity, but you can put a number to how quickly this year's badges sold out after becoming available during open registration Saturday: 72 minutes.

According to a rundown from the Unofficial SDCC Blog, the queue of registered buyers was sorted and badges officially went on sale at 9:12 a.m. Pacific Time. The badges were completely gone by 10:24 a.m. That was considerably faster than the preregistration sale last month, which took nearly 2 1/2 hours.

The Unofficial SDCC blog speculates that the longer preregistration could have led to the quick sale of badges under open registration: "It could also mean that CCI sold the majority of the available badges during preregistration, and therefore a lower inventory of badges were available during [Saturday]’s sale."

The blog also documented a handful of site crashes and other problems that people who wanted to buy badged encountered, though the number of errors actually seemed to have decreased from last year.

For those users who weren't able to get their badges Saturday, there remains some hope, the blog reports:

Every year CCI has put for sale badges which have been returned or cancelled, generally in May or June. Quantities are limited, and CCI has stated that it’s not even a guarantee it will happen, but history says it should. The SDCC 2014 badge refund deadline is May 23, so expect a sale date shortly afterwards based on the remaining inventory of badges.

Keep your fingers crossed, hopefuls.