Anyone else collect Season Passes?

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Posted By: davidcycleback

I used to have some passes. My favorite was a 1920s NY Giants silver season's pass owned by Mrs. Edd Rousch (had her name engraved on back, and I bought it from the family). It was a silver medallion in the shape of a fan of bats.

The highest of high end season passes are the gold passes given only to super duper VIPS. They are rare on the market, and are made out of gold. Even most retired stars wouldn't get a gold pass, but a retired US President or a celebrity like Henry Ford might. Interstingly, most of the gold passes I've seen were given to non-baseball folks. It's likely that MLB assumed the celebrity wouldn't actually attend a lot of games (you probably don't want to be carrying around a gold bar in your back pocket). Instead it was an award, like a medal or plaque. If Henry Ford wanted to use the pass to attend a Cubs game, that would be fine. Presumably, the Cubs would let Ford in even without a ticket-- or at least the Detroit Tigers would.

Almost always, season passes-- gold, silver or cardboard-- were given to people of standing within baseball. Cardboard passes were often given to retired players, retired team executives and similar. The wife of an active player or team Vice President might get one. The season passes weren't generally, if at all, available to average Joe fans.

I've owned a small collection of MLB season passes, and they all belonged to MLB-related people-- Edd Rousch's wife, a retired common Pre-War MLB player (forget his name) and longtime MLB General Manager Harry Dalton. I also had a copy of a 1930s letter written from Ford Frick to 1800s pitcher Tommy Bond in which Frick writes that he will send Bond a season pass so he can attend games. I list my brief collection merely to substantiate that the passes were for VIPs only. In fact, in the case of Tommy Bond, the pass was given out by the League President himself.