I have made an interesting ‘discovery’ when doing some pricing research for the 1919 World Series tickets, specifically for the Chicago Comiskey ones. PSA and Auction Houses likely have it all (or mostly all) wrong and these have ALL been erroneously mislabeled in my opinion. I am putting this thread up for feedback on ideas to write this up.
Conclusions:
1- The 'fat' tickets that have the number 3 on them are all the base ticket that included stubs on the right hand side for Games 3, 4, 5 of the WS.
2- The 'vertical' or 'SkiBall' type tickets that have #1 and #2 on them are either a) truly from Games 3 and Game 4, or b) pertain to Pavilion 1 or Pavilion 2. My preferred conclusion is 'a' after much deliberation, but I will not rule out ‘b’.
3- All tickets that have a 4 on them are from Game 8.
4- The different colour fat tickets pertain to the different areas of the large Grand Stand that was the feature of Old Comiskey Park.
On to my 'dissertation'...
So, let's start with a 'photo' of Comiskey Park from 1909.
https://chicagology.com/baseball/sou...iskeypark1910/
Looking at the various parts of the stadium, the large, columned 'Ebbets-Field' like part that stretches between just past 1st base and just past 3rd base is The Grand Stand. It had 2 levels. The single level areas that are far down the left and right field lines are the 2 'Pavilions'. I have no idea what the seats in left-centre and right-centre are called. The site explains the different parts of the stadium and their terminology.
Now, let's look at the 'fat' tickets. I have been able to obtain (so far) 17 images of these tickets (I will blow these up later in the discussion). Keep in mind, even though these are labeled for a specific auction/source, there are many duplicate sales of the same ticket over different years/houses that I just did not list. I do not own one (yet!).
That is quite a lot given the paucity of all of the other variations. The attendance for all of the home White Sox games for the series was quite similar (low 29,000, high 34,000).The 17 tickets is a massive amount larger than any other game, which is one reason I do not think that the '3' represents a specific game.
ALL 17 of the fat tickets say '3' on them – EVERY SINGLE ONE! None have any other number. For many older series, tickets were sold in 3s, and I believe that these 'fat' tickets were all sold for games 3,4,5. With the perforation on the right side, I postulate that they were sold much like the Press Tickets for the Series, with the 'stubs' being taken by the ticket takers. Sadly, I have never seen an image for a 'full' ticket or any of the 'stubs'.
The base ticket does not indicate anything game-specific and the Game #s are on the stubs to the right. My guess is that if we had a 'full' ticket, that this would have a Game 3, Game 2 and Game 1 stub, each to be ripped off the day of the game.
There is precedence for this in the 1924 World Series with the ticket strip being for all 4 games in Washington (this strip for the 'Pavilion':There may have been other examples, but I have not looked them up yet.
As you notice in the overall photo of the tickets, there are 4 colours for the fat tickets: yellow/light orange, red/dark orange, white and blue.
ALL the yellow/light orange are for the Upper Deck (behind home plate) and cost $5.50. The darker orange is an Upper Deck Seat and the Lighter an Upper Deck Box Seat. This is the dark orange version:
Now we can see the Lighter orange ones are both Upper Deck Box Seat. Both have '3' on them.
Proceeding to the orange/red ones, all 6 are for the Grand Stand Reserved Seat and sell for $3.30. Again, all have '3' on them. These MAY be for those sections along left and right field and the Pavilions (I will get to them) may actually be pertaining to the outfield seats??? I believe these are for the edges of the grand stand, still within the large building structure.
The Blue one is unique and is for an Upper Deck Seat. It's in beautiful condition and is currently selling on eBay, apparently from the collection of Bill Mastro himself!
The White tickets are all for the lower Grandstand and are the best seats in the house. One is a 'Lower Grand Stand Seat', One is a 'Field Box Seat' while ALL the others are 'Lower Grand Stand Box'. All sell for $5.50
Apologies for the black and white image as it's from a 1994 auction. There is one other image I found that is similar to all of these tickets (6-5-6) but it is a 'replica' and not an original ticket (or a copy of it). Same idea thought with a white ticket in the Grand Stand Box.
OK, hopefully you are not bored (or super annoyed) yet because the other 'SkiBall' tickets are next on the list. Every one that I have seen is pink. Every one that I have seen either has a '1' or a '2'. While it hints that this is the Game #, it is not distinctly saying that. There are no full tickets that show what is missing below the rip or to the right of the perforation. There is most importantly, also no '3' Pavilion Tickets in existence. If there was, I would think that the numbers corresponded to the games. However, since I have no indication that any Pavilion Tickets for Game 3 exist, that is why I postulate that these could correspond to each of the Pavilions either down the right and left field lines (my original thought if it's not the red/orange fat tickets) or, they are actually the 'bleachers' in the outfield. I wonder if they could be numbered 1 and 2 on a seating chart? The cost only $2.20 which may be the indicator that they are outfield seats.
These are ALL the '1' and '2' tickets in existence (2 or 3 each) that I can find. Compared to the 17 'fat' ones, these in my mind CANNOT be the only unique representation of tickets for Games 3 and 4. In other words, they MAY be for those games, but clearly the 'fat' tickets are for games 3, 4 and 5 and these are the Pavilion seats. Again, the attendance for all games is similar, so having 17 for one game and 2 or 3 for the others makes NO sense. It's not like the '56 World Series where everyone saved their Game 5 ticket which is more 'common' than many of the others. Again, the lack of a '3' ticket to me means that these may have represented the number of the Grandstand as opposed to the number of the game. Again, no fat tickets exist with a 1 or a 2. I would love to come across a vertical ‘3’ ticket to clear this up.
Precedence for this btw is numerous with a Bleacher or 'Cheap Seat' being a different format than the remainder of the stadium tickets. The 1936 All-Star Game in Boston is a good example of this.
Finally...game '4'. There are 5 tickets that I have seen and these may have been all for Game 8. The total numbers makes sense (5 for game 8, and a total of 21/3=7 for each of games 3,4,5). They are from all over the stadium and are all the SkiBall format. I postulate these were printed separately when they realized that the series would be coming back to Chicago for an 8th game.
There are still a few interesting observations from these. Apologies for the last image, but if you look closely, it does say 'Bleacher Admission' and seems to cost only $1.10. It was from an auction back in the 90s as well so the image is horrid. It may be the only 'Outfield Seat' in existence. Also, the Pavilion Admission ticket was purple in one image and difficult to tell in the other. The 1st of the 5 images is actually the one on display in the Baseball Hall of Fame and through glass with lighting, it may actually be purply. I am trying to get an idea if they have other tickets or images of them so I can add to my theorization.
So each of the 1, 2, 4 ticket versions have at least 2 Pavilion Admission tickets and there are still none with 3. The odds of that to me are quite slim, and could support the idea that the 1,2 are different pavilions and perhaps were sold on the day of the game only.
In conclusion, PSA has slabbed a TON of these incorrectly. Every auction house for the past 20 years has labeled a 'fat' ticket as Game 5 or perhaps Game 3, but none as Game 3/4/5. There is also an assumption that the SkiBall versions pertain to the game number, which I am not 100% convinced yet (but likely is).
I would LOVE a good seat map or chart of the layout of the seats within Old Comiskey Park for the stadium format 1910-1926. This too may answer some questions. Perhaps there are ads in old Chicago newspapers in last 1919 for World Series tickets? Maybe even somewhere there is a photo or 'drawing' of a full ticket? There are a few missing 'smoking guns' that would help with conclusions such as a full ticket from either the fat or pavilion version, or a Game 3 Pavilion version.
Who do people know (or where should I look?) as the EXPERTS in the World of Ticket Collecting? Any images from private collections would be great to add to this 'article'. I'm sure that every one of the 25 tickets that I talked about have to be in advanced collections of World Series tickets!? Some may be in 'Black Sox' collections, but otherwise there are people out there who would have interest in this topic (and other ticket related topics). I have only 350 different WS tickets, so still a ways to go before being one of the 'big boys', but would love to get information from others who KNOW tickets as I don't know if this has ever been analyzed quite so extensively.
I would love to hear people's thoughts and direction on this information. Does anyone have or know of other 1919 Comiskey WS tickets in collections/existence?!