PSA will authenticate anything

[Deertick]

Originally Posted by Oldtix

Like many of you, I get a thrill in holding an old ticket stub that allowed the original owner to witness a Babe Ruth home run or a Walter Johnson shutout. I get the same thrill from owning tickets to other events - big band concerts, Worlds Fairs, political speeches, and (you guessed it) radio and TV shows. I now own over 5,000 broadcast tickets. I refer to this as "my collection"; my family and friends refer to is as "my cry for help." But I digress...

There are many dealers who follow "If you slab it, they will come" business model. From time to time, sellers have used PSA to try to enhance the importance and worth of an item. PSA is apparently more than willing to support their wish. In general, because the value of old TV tickets is pretty low, there's not much downside to the practice.

But believe it or not, there are a few TV tickets that have been reprinted or counterfeited. Authentic tickets to the Beatles Ed Sullivan Show appearances have sold for over $10,000, and tickets for early Elvis Presley appearances aren't far behind. Tickets to I Love Lucy routinely sell for over $1,000 and as high as $5,000. There is a case to be made for a company to reliably authenticate such tickets. Case in point - the famous Elvis 1968 comeback TV special was cut from four different taping sessions, each will less than 200 audience members. A few years later, exact replicas of the tickets were printed as insert "extras" in an Elvis LP. These reprints are routinely sold on ebay as genuine to unsuspecting buyers. If memory serves, some of these have been slabbed. If you've bought one of these tickets, you're probably in for disappointment.

So the point is that the questions raised in previous posts are not hypothetical. In some cases, the false sense of security given by authentication isn't worth the plastic it's packed in unless the grading company does their homework.

For those who have made the effort to read this far, I reward you with a peek at my rare 1974 rookie season "Chico and the Man" ticket...and the ticket for the 1977 taping cancelled by the suicide of Freddie Prinze a few days earlier. Ain't Net54 grand?

Rick, you have provided me with yet another example of how great Net54 is!

Leon, I hope you understand how truly special this place is. It is an island of truth, knowledge, and information in the morass that is the interweb. (Or, if you prefer, a beacon on a rocky outcropping in the Bering Sea on the solstice)