Ticket Grading

qmayer

I was looking at the Set Registry and clicked on the Tickets section. There are only 2 composites - All-Star games and Super Bowls. No sets have been registered.

Does anyone here collect graded tickets or ticket stubs? I haven't heard much about them since they started doing it. A quick search on eBay only showed 40 in the past 3 months with only 12 getting bids. Thoughts?

Justin

jimtb

Hi Justin,
I have collected tickets for several years. I believe the prices for ticket grading are just too high, and in my opinionand condition is not as critical when it comes to tickets. In my mind, the real driver for ticket prices is scarcity.
Jim

roastedcat

I thought about starting this set?

However, don't feel like wasting my money on this. Seems like there are alot of high priced used tickets on ebay that I can do without. I rather pool in my resources and just work on my Hall of fame autograph set. It would be nice if somebody would request a World Series Baseball set, I know I could submit one card just to be on the registery.


Jery

interchanges

Mastro got $8888.00 for the Denver-Dallas full Super Bowl ticket in an 8. Wow, that must be a toughie. Seems like they did well with the others too.
Sportscards plus also offered a few baseball stubs for sale but the prices did seem very high.
jimtb is right.
Tickets are a specialized field, many sportscard collectors own a few for fun, but is there any kind of price guide?

Anyone know if they print the final score on all the ticket slabs?

mikeschmidt

Brian Seigel owns a number of vintage (read: 1910s - 1920s) PSA graded World Series ticket stubs

Skycap

Unfortunately, $25 for grading any pre-1980 ticket (and $15 for more recent ones) is way too expensive for me. When PSA announced nearly a year ago they'd be grading tickets, I assumed the price would be about the same as for cards, which can be as little as $6 apiece. But to find out they'll be charging $25 and $15 is a big shock! What is it about grading a ticket that causes such a high price? With all due respect to PSA, I don't see how a ticket is scrutinized more than a card to the extent that the grading fees need to be two to four times higher.

Regrettably for PSA, I don't foresee a big market in the grading of tickets. I also don't see much added value to the collector in having a ticket graded. Ebay and big auctions are flooded with PSA graded cards, but unfortunately for PSA I predict that the number of people who have tickets graded will be rather small. You'll see very few of them on Ebay and elsewhere. It's a very small niche, perhaps most appealing to those who just want a few of their most prized tickets encapsulated -- as compared to card collectors and dealers who have cards graded by the dozens, hundreds or even thousands. Apparently PSA has run into glitches getting the ticketing grading program started, because for nearly a year they've shown a "Ticket Grading Coming Soon" box on the left side of their home page.

I do have a lot of nice looking tickets from events I've attended -- Super Bowls, major college bowl games, World Series, All-Star games, NBA finals, Stanley Cup finals, Olympics, etc. I'll just keep them safely tucked away where they are!

Skycap

dude

I bid and lost on five different Steeler Super Bowl tickets in the last Mastro auction. All were full tickets graded PSA 7. They went for $2100.

I agree that ticket grading prices are a bit high right now. I have a Super Bowl X full ticket I'd like to have graded plus some other special event baseball tickets I'd like to have graded too. Right now I'm going to take a wait and see approach before sending them all in and see if the grading is justified in the value of the ticket.

onegaucho

I like collecting ticket stubs from significant games I've been to (ie. Gwynn's last home game, Rickey's 3000th, Hoffman's 300th save, etc.)

But to grade them... I know I went and I'll probably not want to sell the ticket stub anyways. And as others have said, the price is too high.

Plus, I don't really like the concept of having unused tickets to major events. Although, I have to admit that I've collected a few other 3000th hit game tickets that were unused

jimtb

There are World Series, All Star game ans Super Bowl collectors out there, where I could see the benefit of grading due the prices that some of these tickets command. However, I have talked with a lot more ticket collectors that collect other events, such a Ripken's streak, Koufax starts, and specific years of a team (a World Championship year, for example).

The challenge of these collectors are finding the tickets. They often sell for less than 10 bucks when found, but can be very hard to find. I think PSA is completely missing this part of the ticket collecting market (myself included) because of the steep grading fees.
Jim