Magic Johnson debut unused ticket

pauldrolkees

It's crazy this was sold so fast and for this much. Is this a case of a highly motivated buyer or the market for unused debut tickets are getting more intense?

https://ebay.com/itm/323859888543

doubledragon

Probably a combination of things. First of all it's Magic Johnson, it's his debut game, it's unused, all of which are very appealing to anyone who collects his stuff. It's a one of a kind collector's item. It's really quite beautiful.

Ironmanfan

I often see small punch holes on tickets.....Anyone know what their purpose was?

IMF

RedHeart54

They may have been comp tickets.

ICE9

Wow! $4k...that's amazing. There seems to be tremendous opportunity in key / milestone ticket stubs...

BriYo79

Wow. Anyone know why he didn't play game 1?

pauldrolkees

I have some unused college football debut ticket

AFLfan

@Ironmanfan said:
I often see small punch holes on tickets.....Anyone know what their purpose was?

IMF

I'm not 100% sure of this, but I think I remember hearing somewhere that tickets hole-punched like that are ones that actually went unsold and somehow came out of the ticket office at a later date? But again, I'm not positive that is the case.

basketballcollector

I don't trust the price it sold. That's absolutely ridiculous. Chamberlain 100 point ticket doesn't get that much sometimes.

esquiresports

@Ironmanfan said:
I often see small punch holes on tickets.....Anyone know what their purpose was?

IMF

My recollection, growing up around that time, was that tickets got punched upon entry. Probably where the phrase "punch your ticket" comes from. I do not believe it is tied to comp or unused tickets.

KnightRider

This is certainly an awesome ticket, but I don't believe it was used at the game. It makes no sense that a ticket-taker would punch a ticket TWICE (once on each side), rather than tear a ticket in half ONCE. If you multiply that by the hundreds of tickets each attendant would process, punching every ticket twice would be an extremely inefficient method of admitting people to the game. Also, how would the box office count how many tickets were tendered for the game if they didn't keep half the ticket? There's not typically a counter on a hole puncher...

My guess is that this ticket was punch cancelled by the box office either because it was unsold or a comp ticket. When someone can unearth some additional 1979 Clippers season tickets (which on its own is hard enough and highlights how rare this Magic ticket is in any form), then we can see whether they're torn or hole-punched.

dontippet

The auction states that it was an unused ticket.

erikthredd

IIRC there was an 84 Jordan NBA debut ticket in a PSA slab that sold for around 10K through an auction house not to long ago. I've seen others sell in the 3-6k range too.