Dating game tickets
 

Is there a secret to dating tickets? Here's one that's supposed to be from 1924.

http://tinyurl.com/mlhq9r

What about the ticket indicates that? I know the price gives a range, and Washington's grandstand tickets were up to $1.35 by 1935. But could this be from game #61 in 1923? in 1926? It's hard to believe that the serial number records still exist from back then.

Thanks,

Bill

Good question. Im kind of curious too.

scott- i was just about to post the same exact response...

bill- i've always wondered this as well, great question.

I too am curious. Often tickets can be dated somewhat accurately by whose name appears on the bottom, but Clark Griffith doesn't help. And many tickets at least have a date printed on it (seldom a year), so that is at least a clue. This one has nothing except Game #61. Something tells me this may be be a dubious dating.

Just a guess but maybe a combination of the ticket price, and the game number (in this case 61) can narrow down the year?

If you go to retrosheet.com, you can look up schedules for each team and the game number for each team for each year. It appears that in 1924, Washington played its 72nd game on June 24 not its 61st. In fact #61 was away at St. Louis so this ticket cannot be from 1924. Washington was home vs. Cleveland for its game # 61 in both 1923 and 1925.

Just as I suspected! As so often happens, given a few possible dates, the owner (or grader) assumes it must be the most historically important one. I've seen it many times.

I have been collecting ticket stubs for 25+ years and it is very difficult to place an exact date on the older undated ticket stubs. There are great sites to help (retrosheet being one of them) but it takes quite a bit of effort without any clues.

Jeff

not to further complicate things, but doesn't game #61 refer to the 61st HOME game, NOT the 61st game overall for the season?

I believe MVSNYC is correct that it refers to the home game number and not to the the total game number of the team. You could buy season ticket books in advance of the season back then and the numbers on the tickets would only go to 81 or however many home games there were so you could be using stub number 81 on the 162nd game if it was the 81st home game.

Rhys

Not sure. You may be right about that but that makes it even more impossible because they could not have played that many home games by June 26. In fact by my count, June 26 was only their 25th home game.

Regardless of how you interpret the 61st game, it does not appear the stub is properly identified.

Numbering of tickets
 

The game number as referred to on the ticket would also refer to the original schedule, not the actual game played, postponements or cancellations due to rain, etc. would need to be factored in.

Doug

retrosheet
 

Just a small correction: it is retrosheet.org not .com

Retrosheet is actually linked to this board. If you hit "vintage links" at the top, and then "historical sites", you will find it. I use it all the time.

Here is a thread that discussed many similar questions from a couple years back.

http://www.net54baseball.com/showthr...detroit+ticket

In short, I'd support the thought that it references the 61st home game scheduled to be played.

If this really is a 1924 ticket, evidence would indicate this was from a game on August 13, 1924 which was a 5-1 loss in which Covaleski was the pitcher. I would think this would be the case unless there was a rainout in which tickets were taken beforehand and then the rain stubs would be used later for a different game. Research would need to be done with newspapers to confirm a specific date based on the information on here but since we dont even know if it is a 1924 stub there really would be no point. I dont see any way this could be from the game on the PSA flip.

Rhys