Buying Super Bowl tickets is often an art. One that's equal parts patience and timing.

Wait long enough, but not too long, live close enough, but not so close that a scalper thinks you're desperate, and you can typically land a ticket for less than anyone expects. Oh, the price will still be supersized, but no longer so out of range for many diehards.

"People have a number," said Pat Ryan, co-owner of The Ticket Experience, a Houston-based ticket broker. "And they're waiting to see if tickets fall to that number. If it gets to $1,500, I'm buying a ticket and driving up. If it gets to $1,000 . . .

"Some people can't justify it if it's at $2,200. But they have a number where they're going."

At most Super Bowls, those folks would be in luck (or think they're in luck, depending on your view of dropping a grand-plus for an upper-level stadium seat). But not this Super Bowl in Jerry World. At least, not so far.

Reports that there could be more frozen precipitation in Dallas on Sunday dropped a few tickets as low as $1,900 Friday night on giant ticket sites like Stubhub.com. But prices zoomed back up to $2,895 for the lowest-priced seat by Saturday night. Steelers, Packers and Jerry Jones' space-age stadium have remained one powerful draw in a week in which party promoters have grown increasingly desperate and many restaurant owners are crying into the ice.

Ryan and his business partner Nick Cubero believe part of the reason for that is Houstonians interest in the game. Particularly Houstonians who felt shut out of the 2004 Super Bowl held at Reliant Stadium.

"It was a completely different ticket market back when Houston had the Super Bowl," Cubero said. "The NFL had much tighter control over the tickets then. There were a lot people willing to pay good money who couldn't get in. They're making up for that a little with this Super Bowl. The feeling is they're not going to miss another Super Bowl in Texas."

This is the first Super Bowl in recent memory where tickets bought by the residents of the game's home state far out strip tickets sold to fans in the states where the participating teams are from (Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in this case). It's a Texas Super Bowl in many ways, even if both the Cowboys and Texans were eliminated from contention for the game months ago.

The difference since the last Texas Super Bowl in Houston is how the secondary ticket market has exploded. Stubhub wasn't as omnipresent in 2004 and the NFL didn't have its own Ticket Exchange, essentially a league-sanctioned ticket broker.

"Once the NFL started the Ticket Exchange, everything changed," Cubero said. "The league couldn't really object to the tickets changing hands anymore when it was doing the same thing."

Most last-minute Super Bowl ticket purchasers are within four to five hours drive of the game site, in the Ticket Exchange duo's experience.

Wondering why Super Bowl tickets aren't dropping to your number? Look at the Houstonian next to you, getting ready to drive up for the game. It turns out that prices are another thing that are bigger in Texas.