Tickets available for under $2,000 – for now

? Savvy Super Bowl ticket shoppers can find seats for less than $2,000, ticket brokers said Monday.

Local brokers quoted price ranges from $1,850 to $2,500 for nosebleed seats and $4,000 to $6,000 or more for prime seats to the Feb. 5 game at Ford Field. Prices may hinge on how seriously fans in Seattle take their Seahawks’ first trip to the Super Bowl. Combined with Detroit’s reputation for rough winter weather, the lack of football tradition in Seattle and its distance from Detroit may bring seats as low as $1,500, said Paul Martens, corporate sales manager for TicketsNow in Chicago.

“You gotta find the panic day and hit it then,” Martens said, advising fans to gauge prices over the next several days.

Super Bowl tickets have face values of $600 and $700. But the NFL keeps a tight lock on supply, largely limiting distribution to corporate sponsors and its 32 teams. The Lions got 5 percent of the tickets as the host. The Seahawks and Steelers each will get 17.5 percent (about 11,000 tickets each). Both teams are passing on most of those to season-ticket holders through lotteries.

Every year, though, thousands of tickets end up in the hands of brokers who buy them from season-ticket holders, corporate sources, players and others with NFL connections. The brokers, in turn, advertise online and in newspapers, and some scramble to fill orders right until kickoff.

Buying a Super Bowl ticket is a bit like buying a used car or a new couch – prices are always negotiable. And volatile. For example, if brokers are wrong and Seahawks fans hit Detroit in over-caffeinated numbers, ticket prices could skyrocket. Last year, last-minute Philadelphia Eagles fans flooded Jacksonville, pushing basic seats above $3,000 right before the game, compared to about $2,000 a week or two earlier.

“If you’re serious about going, it’s better to lock in a price now,” said Ram Silverman, vice president of Golden Tickets, a Plano, Texas, company that opened a Detroit office for Super Bowl XL.

Silverman and others predicted waves of black-and-gold-clad fans would drive in from Pittsburgh, but the market would be more frenzied were the Steelers facing the equally close Chicago Bears in the final game. “Certainly Steeler fans will outweigh Seahawk fans 3-to-1,” predicted Silverman, who is brokering his 18th Super Bowl.

Richard Roth, a broker with Mar Tickets in Farmington Hills, said he was offering to buy upper-bowl tickets for $1,700 or $1,800, but fans who had them were holding out for more.

“They want $2,500 and that’s just too much,” Roth said.