It’s been an interesting few days in the world of concert tickets.

Last Friday, news hit about Boston-based Fidelity Investments and their most famous fund mananger, Peter Lynch, over a ticket scandal. Reuters reported that “Once known as America’s most successful fund manager because Magellan at times generated returns more than five times that of the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, 64-year-old Lynch relied on two Fidelity traders to procure 61 tickets worth $15,948 for various events from 1999 to 2004, the SEC said. These included sold-out Ryder Cup golf tournaments, a Santana rock concert, and 11 tickets to see Irish rock band U2, according to the SEC.”

For this, Fidelity Investments was fined by the Security and Exchange Commision $8 million. For his part, Peter Lynch paid $20,000 to settle the charges.

For anyone arguing over the cost of a U2 concert ticket, I think $8,020,000 for 11 U2 tickets (plus a few other events thrown in) is hands-down the highest price we’ve seen yet.

In other ticket news…on Saturday, I tried to buy tickets for Billy Joel’s 7th show at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, Connecticut. His other 6 shows sold out in a matter of seconds. I know he’s popular in my neck of the woods, and the 7th show sold out in about the same amount of time. What surprised me about the ticket sale was that anyone could purchase up to 24 tickets in any transaction. Yes - you read that right, a 24-ticket limit. I’ve seen them go as high as 8 or 10, but never 24. Man, that’s got to be a scalper’s dream! I couldn’t score the tickets in the end, but it’s just as well - I need to save my money for U2’s next tour, which should happen before the end of this decade (hopefully).