The challenge is this: How do you put a value on an experience that you have long been anticipating, has never happened in your lifetime and may not present itself again for many years to come?  Some people refuse to consider such calculations out loud. Cubs fans believe in curses, and many of them believe that any such ticket talk is sure to incur the wrath of the baseball gods.  Those gods, however, can read minds. They know that we’ve been mentally setting money aside for this possibility. And talking about it out loud doesn’t rise to the stuff of Cub legend like denying a billy goat entrance to the ballpark or reaching over the wall for a foul ball that your left fielder might have caught. (Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself.)  Besides, waiting until any potential World Series moment is upon us almost guarantees irrational financial decision making. Better to plot out your plans now with the help of professionals and others with data and clearer heads.  THE STUBHUB DATA Last year, when the Cubs made the National League Championship Series, the online ticket marketplace StubHub did indeed sell real tickets for Game 1 of a World Series at Wrigley Field in anticipation of the Cubs possibly making it that far.  The company refunded the money when the Mets beat the Cubs and went to the World Series themselves, but not before it got a pretty good sense of what Cubs fans were willing to pay. The lowest price that anyone paid for a ticket was $2,344, and the average was $3,051.  StubHub has to be licking its chops at the prospect of taking its cut of similar numbers if the Cubs make the World Series for real. A StubHub spokesman, Cameron Papp, said there was chatter around the office about what the average numbers might be, noting that prices can always go lower right before game time (depending on the matchup, the weather, the day of the week and other factors). Then again, they could go higher if Cubs fans place an especially high value on the social currency of being present for the first World Series game or two since 1945. Can you imagine the envy-inducing Instagram posts?  The company declined, though, to offer a formal prediction of what the lowest or average entry point might be for any particular 2016 game.  THE ECONOMIST Without having seen the StubHub data, Benjamin Keys, a lifelong Cubs fan and assistant professor of real estate at Wharton, came up with a similar range for what he might be willing to pay: $3,000 to $5,000 a ticket. (Yes, he’s married. Yes, his spouse knows. She paid $2,400 for a ticket to see her beloved Pittsburgh Steelers in the Super Bowl in 2006.)  Mr. Keys, who just moved away from Chicago, spoke to me with a bit of reluctance, both because he doesn’t want to set a price floor for scalpers and because he fears a jinx. “But for a team so steeped in myths and curses, it’s good to try cut through some of that with cold, hard facts,” he said.  So how did he get to his number? He began by considering what any potential World Series ticket might replace. How many future trips back to Chicago to see friends or regular season Cubs games would he put off? Would he rob his entire tickets and travel budget for many years to come?  Local fans who lack season tickets might pay to attend a handful of games each year. “So if you were told that you couldn’t go to any games for the next 10 years but would get to go to your first World Series game, would you take that offer?” he asked. “It puts things in stark terms.”  Mr. Keys, who shares season tickets with six other people and thus may end up with a lower-priced World Series ticket depending on how his group divides up any theoretical tickets and what the face value ends up being, suggests patience, too. Many crucial Cubs players are young and management is smart, so they may contend for many years to come. Several teams have appeared in the World Series more than once in the last decade. So for those who just want to see a single World Series game in Wrigley Field before they die, they might want to wait, even if the Cubs do make it this year.  “But there is something to be said for it being the first time since 1945,” he said. “And there are people who might not be able to wait until next year.”  FANS AND FAMILIES In 1956, Nick Frabotta jumped out of the stands at Comiskey Park in Chicago and ran out on the field to shake Mickey Mantle’s hand. The rabid New York Yankees and Cubs fan is 77 years old now and has had a few health hiccups. So his daughter, Linda Ramsey, is determined to get him into Wrigley Field to see any World Series game there. “I’d move heaven and earth to do it,” she said.  Her price range? Again, $3,000 or so. She, too, was not aware of the StubHub data from last year. She said she and her brother arrived at that figure during last year’s playoffs when they contemplated what they could spend if they pooled their funds and guessed at what the market rate might be.  In an interview this week, she said she might be willing to chip in as much as $4,000, but probably no more.  Not everyone can afford that much, even if they do set aside every dollar from the next decade’s travel budget.  Rebecca Parrilla became a Cubs fan watching them play on television while growing up in Puerto Rico. She lived in Chicago from 1992 until earlier this year, when she and her family moved to Chapel Hill, N.C., and were delighted to discover that the “LUV CUBS” vanity plate was available. Her ticket budget tops out at about $750, though she said that if she were still single and had no children she’d spend double that.  People who can’t spend into the four figures will need to be creative if they hope to land seats. Nathaniel McIntyre, an actor and lifelong Boston Red Sox fan, tried a number of tactics in an attempt to land tickets for the 2003 American League Championship Series games against the Yankees. He offered up his 1990 Volkswagen Golf, Shakespeare monologues and tickets to any plays he might perform in for years to come. It was only when he offered his $800 annual charitable budget to the cause of any ticket seller’s choice that he landed two seats in the bleachers.  The Red Sox lost the game he saw and lost the series in heartbreaking fashion, but Mr. McIntyre, whom I wrote about in 2003 in The Wall Street Journal, doesn’t regret a cent of his expenditure. In an email this week recalling his decades of fandom, he explained that the loss was just part of the process, same as it was when he cried in his bathroom in 1986 after Marty Barrett struck out and the Red Sox lost the deciding game of the World Series, and when he celebrated in the basement of a theater in Stoneham, Mass., when his team finally won it all in 2004.  “I hope Cubbie fans will employ some out-of-the-box lateral thinking,” he said, “and find a way to get to Wrigley this postseason.”  The Your Money column on Saturday, about Chicago Cubs fans’ budgeting for a World Series ticket, using information from a family member, misstated the year when one baseball fan, Nick Frabotta, shook Mickey Mantle’s hand. It was 1956, not 1959. And two picture captions misspelled the surname of another fan in some editions. She is Rebecca Parrilla, not Parilla.  A version of this article appears in print on September 10, 2016, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Hard Numbers Intrude Where Cubs Fans Dream. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
For the chance to see their team in the World Series for the first time in 71 years, some fans are prepared to dig deep, and others may get creative.