Learn English – “Scalp a Ticket” vs “Resell a Ticket”

etymologymeaningword-usage

The noun "Scalp" means (mainly):

  1. The skin covering the head, excluding the face: 'hair tonics will improve the condition of your hair and scalp'

1.1 [historical] The scalp with the hair belonging to it, cut or torn away from an enemy’s head as a battle trophy, a former practice
among American Indians.

[Oxford Online Dictionary]

If you look at the definition of "ticket resale" in [Wikipedia], it could be a common thing for any sports, concerts, etc. in any country.

  1. I understand what "to scalp tickets" means, but I don't understand how "to scalp" has evolved to mean "to resell".

  2. Does "to scalp" have a stronger connotation of "illegality" than "to resell"?

  3. According to [Oxford Online Dictionary], it seems that "to scalp" is mainly used in North America. What would be its counterpart in BrE?

North American informal Resell (shares or tickets) at a large or quick profit: tickets were scalped for forty times their face value

I could get the below Ngram Viewer for AmE, but couldn't find any usage in BrE.

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Best Answer

To scalp carries an informal, possibly illegal (unauthorised) , connotation that resell does not:

  • (Informal.) to resell (tickets, merchandise, etc.) at higher than the official rates.

Thus usage is from the late 19th century from a practice that became popular in the U.S. with long distance train tickets:

Scalp: (Etymonline)

  • Meaning "person who re-sells tickets at unauthorized prices for a profit," 1869, American English;earliest reference is to theater tickets, but often used late 19c. of brokers who sold unused portions of railway tickets.

    • [Railways charged less per mile for longer-distance tickets; therefore someone travelling from New York to Chicago could buy a ticket all the way to San Francisco, get out at Chicago and sell it to a scalper, and come away with more money than if he had simply bought a ticket to Chicago; the Chicago scalper would hold the ticket till he found someone looking for a ticket to San Francisco, then sell it to him at a slight advance, but for less than the official price.]

  • Perhaps from scalp (v.); scalper was a generic term for "con man, cheater" in late 19c. Or perhaps the connecting sense is the bounty offered for scalps of certain destructive animals (attested in New England from 1703) and sometimes Indians (i.e., having only part of something, but still getting paid). Some, though, see a connection rather to scalpel, the surgical instrument.

Scalping in finance:

  • A trading strategy that attempts to make many profits on small price changes. Traders who implement this strategy will place anywhere from 10 to a couple hundred trades in a single day in the belief that small moves in stock price are easier to catch than large ones.

  • Traders who implement this strategy are known as scalpers. The main goal is to buy (or sell) a number of shares at the bid (or ask) price and then quickly sell them a few cents higher (or lower) for a profit. Many small profits can easily compound into large gains if a strict exit strategy is used to prevent large losses.

(Investment.com)

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