Now that you're off to convince the spouse, I for one was answering the wrong question.

Given that the agent at IST will let you pay for the tix before arriving (c/c? wire xfer?) why will they not accept another USD25 from you and Fedex them to you? Agents and airlines seem to be getting much more casual about what once were strong SITI rules.

Other than that, the security of tickets sitting in IST sounds to me like it depends a whole lot on the integrity of the entity holding them.