Marlins selling Halladay Perfect Game tickets

[RichardSimon]

I don't know if this is a common practice, perhaps it has happened in the past, but the Florida Marlins will now be selling perfect game tickets that were unused for Halladay's perfect game.
Here is the link to the story:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...B9CawD9G207MO0

[scooter729]

Interesting story, Richard. I am not 100% sure, but I believe someone I know purchased many tickets to the 2nd Roger Clemens 20 strikeout game from the Detroit Tigers after the game happened. He bought tickets which were the cheapest available ($2.50 I think, must've been bleachers or SRO, plus it was 1996), but I do think the Tigers made these available after the actual game took place.

[Scott Garner]

Baseball teams have routinely printed box office tickets to a number of historic games after the fact since the mid 1990's.

Some examples of this include: tickets to Dave Winfield's 3,000th hit, Roger Clemens' 2nd 20 strikeout game ticket (at Detroit in 1996), Mark McGwire's 62nd HR and 70th HR in 1998, Kevin Brown's no-hitter at SF in 1997. All of these tickets, with the exception of the two McGwire games that I mentioned, are box office style tickets and have the actual PRINT DATE on the ticket (usually in the margin to the left), which is the give away that the ticket was printed after the fact. The problem with purchasing tickets like these is that they retain very little value over time. My experience has been that true ticket collectors are interested in the real deal, not souvenir reprint tickets.

BTW, one way to avoid this problem as a collector is to only purchase "season ticket" style tickets to games like these. This way you can avoid "manufactured memorabilia" produced by greedy MLB upper management. I guess the temptation of being able to boost attendance dollars is just too great for some organizations. Sad, but true.... With regards to tickets to Halliday's perfect game, there already appear to be a multitude (shitload) of tickets (both box office and season tickets) readily available on eBay. Why even bother to buy a reprinted ticket when so many originals exist in the hobby? Food for thought...

[baseball tourist]

Originally Posted by RichardSimon

I don't know if this is a common practice, perhaps it has happened in the past, but the Florida Marlins will now be selling perfect game tickets that were unused for Halladay's perfect game.
Here is the link to the story:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...B9CawD9G207MO0

Thanks Richard...I was hoping to pick up a ticket from this game. Have collected a few 'after the fact' through the team's box office throughout the years. The toughest was the last Ripken streak game ticket. chris

[T206Collector]

That I attended both David Cone's and David Wells' perfect games at Yankee Stadium and after each game I was able to find a discarded ticket -- for Wells it was on the floor a couple rows ahead of mine; for Cone it was in a pothole on River Ave.

Nuts!

[mcgwirecom]

Good post Scott!

My nephew called me and told me they were doing this. I told him just about word for word what Scott wrote. I know Seattle did it for Nolan Ryan's last game and Detroit did it for Clemens 2nd 20 strikeout game. I was just getting into ticket collecting at that time and bought a bunch. After a while someone had mentioned the date code on the ticket showing they were made after the fact. It really made me mad and opened my eyes. As Scott said, now I just stick to the season ticket. But in 1998 the Cardinals reprinted McGwire's 62nd and 70th homerun SEASON tickets as a gift for season ticket holders. AND THERE S NO WAY TO TELL ITS A REPRINT! I had purchased multiple tickets to all of his September games. Luckily I had sold my extras before the Cardinals sent out the reprints and flooded the market! They also did this in 1999 with his 500th homerun. I am not sure if they did it for Griffeys 500th which happened there.

If you look on Ebay most people just bid on the season tickets. Mostly because they are much nicer looking, but also because people have seen this reprint thing happen! Since the advent of StubHub it shouldn't be so difficult to find nice unused season tickets. A lot of people are now buying up season tickets to re-sell. When you re-sell on StubHub they do not deal with the mailing of tickets. You buy the season ticket, send in the ticket numbers and StubHub disables that ticket so the buyer can print out another new one at home. So the seller can actually make two profits, one from selling the ticket and another from selling the disabled ticket later if it is a significant game. For guys like me who want to go to the game with a season ticket in hand, it makes it tough! I wanted to buy a season ticket to Stephen Strasburg's first MLB game and also attend and I found it pretty hard to do! ( he is supposed to make his 1st start against Pirates next week)

[ss]

The Marlins draw very few fans, many games with only "hundreds" in the stands. I believe these are the actual unsold tickets.

[D. Bergin]

Says in the article it's the actual unused tickets.

I guess the sad thing about this is that a team who has won two World Series in fairly recent history, gets Montreal Expos type attendance numbers.