Collecting Tips: Sports Tickets & Stubs
By Jim Capobianco

    Collecting tickets is an exciting and rewarding area of collecting. Collectors research tickets to enhance the value. Tickets are issued for sports events, movies, music concerts, dances, museums, political events throughout the world.

    Tickets help promoters keep track of attendance,  and to comply with tax and safety laws. Tickets come in different shapes, sizes and colors; from detailed beautiful artist drawings to plain computer generated tickets. Many tickets have photos of athletes, stadiums, team logos, date, game number, city, seat location and title of event. All of these factors contribute to the value of a ticket. Many stadiums like the Fleet Center in Boston are scanning tickets to Bruins and Celtics games and return the full ticket to the fans for safe keeping.

    There are many types of ticket collectors. Music star tickets are in demand such as Elvis, The Beatles ( I saw them at Suffolk Downs in 1966 there second last concert and I have the ticket!), Frank Sinartra, and others. Other areas of ticket collecting are: Presidential Elections, foreign, railroads, gambling and movie tickets.

Collecting Sports Tickets by Theme Enhances Value
    All sports basketball, football, hockey, boxing, Olympic, tennis, race car driving, soccer and wrestling issue tickets. Sports tickets are issued at the major, minor and the armature level. Baseballs is my favorite sport and hence focus of  my collecting.

    Many ticket collectors base their area of interest on a theme such as, city, team, player, or event. Some collectors want a ticket of every game Carl Yastremski played, Jimmy Foxx hit a home run, Warren Spahn  strike out a batter or won a game. Others collect All-Star, Play-Off, World Series, pennant clinching, Opening Day, championship regular season games and first games or last game of a team. Also in demand are tickets from record-breaking games like Roger Clemens twenty strikeouts, Ted Williams batting .406, commemorative tickets issued by teams to mark special events, and games were players reach milestones like 500 home runs, 3000 hits or strikeouts, 300 wins, four home runs in one game or no-hitters.

    A few of my favorite tickets that I owned are: 1903 first World Series, 1912 Opening Day and first game at Fenway Park during their World Championship season, Ted Williams last at bat in1960 when he hit a home run, the Boston Patriots 1st game, Carl Yastrzemski 3000 hit and Tony Conigliaro first home run Opening Day 1964, Bobby Orr First Game and goal. In ticket collecting there is no numbered set to complete like cards. Collectors collect what they like and create their own theme with endless possibilities.

    In 1998, when Mark McGwire was chasing Roger Maris 61 homerun record collectors were hot chasing tickets from every game McGwire hit a homerun. This happened again in 2001, when Barry Bonds broke the homerun record. These two home run races drove up the demand, interest and the price of tickets in general as more collectors begin collecting tickets. Now that these records are tanted because of the use of power enhancing drugs the demand for these tickets droped and hence the value.  Collecting tickets is popular but still has room for growth as people realize the fun and beauty of tickets.

Tickets Are Scarce
    Ticket collectors enjoy tickets because they are a real piece of memorabilia from a sporting event. They are not mass manufactured like cards. Ticket stubs are connected to the game. It is something tangible left after the game is a memory. Ticket stubs are usually more valuable then programs as tickets (except general admission) list the date of the game, while a program could be for a series of games.

    Tickets are scarce and limited to seating capacity. The scarceness of ticket stubs translates to money value. Even a stub from the 1952 Boston Braves season is scarce. Total attendance for the Boston Braves 1952 was about 250,000 people. How many of those 250,000 people saved a ticket? Two thousand? How many tickets exist today? Two hundred? The Red Sox out draw that now in a week. Scarcity adds value to the price of a ticket stub. When you add the historical significance of event the value can really jump. For example, only 6,000 attended Ted Williams last game, when he hit a home run into the wind in his last at bat. Perhaps less than fifty stubs were kept. I searched for the past ten years and only found four tickets all priced over one thousand dollars. Market value of a stub from Ted Williams's last game is about $1,500 if you can find a ticket for sale. However, if you know the date and you hunt hard you maybe lucky and find it from someone who is not aware of its historical significance.

No Accurate Price Guide For Tickets
    The value of a ticket is harder than a card to figure out. There are publications that list prices for World Series, All-Star and Super Bowl Tickets but these guides are general pricing tickets according to decade. For example, every ten years older in age a ticket may go up $25 in value. A 1960's World Series Ticket is $125, a 1950's ticket is $150, a 1940's ticket is $175 and so on.

    For most tickets there is no price guide. Tickets are less collected, researched and sold than cards. Most prices are gathered by tracking ticket sales in hobby advertisements and auctions, which are incomplete and out dated given the sudden changes in the market place.

    Ticket prices are varied and full of gaps. It will take the new collector time and effort to find their bearings. New tickets from this year All-Star, World Series or Super Bowl are expensive as people pay $100-$3,000 to attend the event and often keep the ticket. Tickets stubs from these recent events sell for about $150 a ticket stub. Even these stubs are worth the price considering the scarcity, beauty and significance. What New England Patriot's fan would not love to have a framed Super Bowl ticket mated and displayed with an autographed photograph of Adam Vanatari kicking home the win?

    Another area of collecting is autograph tickets. My son got Cal Ripken to autograph his 3,000th hit ticket. When Ripken signed it his eyes opened wide and he excitingly told my son, "Wow, I was looking for this, I can't find one." Tino tried to give it to Cal as a gift but Cal felt he couldn't but, at Tino's insistence, Cal smiled and said, "Thank you" as he put the ticket in his uniform pocket. A Cal Ripken autographed 3,000 hit ticket is a great addition to any fan's collection.

    New collectors need to learn all they can about ticket collecting. A related field is season ticket passes, press passes and lifetime passes which are rare and given to ex- ballplayers and executives. Lifetime passes are cherished by retired ballplayers and often carried around in their pocket or keep as the last piece of memorabilia they own as in the case of  Tony Conigliaro and Duffy Lewis. Below see a photograph of my two favorites passes belonging to Red Sox Hall of Famers Duffy Lewis (1912) and Tony Conigliaro.

     Recently, PSA/DNA and other grading companies are slabbing and grading tickets like cards. Some collecters like this option. Tickets can also be displayed in a frame with an autograph photo or matching program. 

    In conclusion, learn all you can about ticket collecting. Remember, when ticket hunting look for historical significance, eye appeal and scarceness. When a ticket has these three qualities you have a great piece of memorabilia to treasure and that will be worth value. I welcome any questions or comments you have. I buy, sell and trade tickets. Visit my eBay store.