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Data-driven reports on the graded ticket market. Straight from our sales database, no waffle.
The last 30 days of graded ticket sales came down to four days
Every graded ticket sale we recorded between 3 August and 2 September 2026, and what the month's repeated lots show about where a ticket sells best.
Read the report→
Ronald Acuna Jr debut ticket sales run from $110 to $8,400, and seven slabs took most of the money
Twenty-eight lots have sold, from $110.40 to $8,400, and three of them hold two thirds of the money. PSA has certified 280 copies of the 25 April 2018 ticket, more of them signed than unsigned.
Eight Stephen Curry debut tickets exist and only one has ever sold at auction
PSA has graded eight copies of the 28 October 2009 ticket. Three of them are better than the one that set the $19,200 record, and none of those three has ever been offered.
Every rung of the Luka Doncic debut ticket price ladder, from $41 to $2,613
There is no single Luka Doncic debut ticket price. PSA catalogues five different Doncic debuts, and across them 25 recorded sales run from $41.00 for an NM-MT 8 to $2,613.24 for the signed NBA debut.
A Kylian Mbappe debut ticket is worth far less than most buyers expect
PSA catalogues thirteen separate Kylian Mbappe debuts across 213 graded tickets. Seven of the thirteen have never been publicly offered, and the one collectors actually want exists six times.
A David Beckham debut ticket from Manchester made $15,028, the Los Angeles one has never sold
Seventeen public sales, $164.70 to $15,027.60, and a single League Cup tie in September 1992 takes 76% of the money. His MLS debut has two graded copies and no sale at all.
What a Victor Wembanyama debut ticket is worth, and why only ten have sold
The Victor Wembanyama debut ticket is recent enough that we hold its entire auction history, and the history is short. Ten sales, nine of them inside seven months of 2024, then almost nothing.
A Giannis Antetokounmpo debut ticket has lost 94% of its value since 2022
One point in four minutes on his NBA debut, and 115 graded copies of the ticket that records it, 52 of them signed by Giannis himself.
An autograph adds $900 to a Mike Trout debut ticket that costs $137
Five weeks apart at the same auction house, the same ticket in the same grade made $136.64 unsigned and $1,037 signed. All 33 public sales of the 8 July 2011 full ticket.
A Ken Griffey Jr. debut ticket stub has never sold above $20,400
Seventeen public sales, from $3,840 to a record $52,460, and 32 graded copies split across two separate PSA population reports.
Every Derek Jeter debut ticket above PSA 5 is an unused full ticket
The record is a PSA GOOD 2 with a signature across the Yankees logo, at $38,430. The finest copy PSA has ever graded has sold twice and made less the second time.
Only one of Shohei Ohtani's sixteen debut tickets has a real market
Eleven of his sixteen debut tickets have never traded at auction. The one that does has tripled in a year, and this is every sale, every grade and every repeat on record.
What a Kobe Bryant debut ticket sells for depends on the year, not the grade
Twenty-six copies of the 3 November 1996 ticket are graded and ten have sold. The best one PSA has ever graded has never been offered at auction.
Aaron Judge debut tickets outnumber every other debut, and the median one sells for $232
Fifty public sales are on record, from $26 up to $6,405. PSA has graded 588 copies of the 13 August 2016 ticket, and every one of the five highest prices went to a signed one.
The same Larry Bird debut ticket sold for $79,200 and then $19,520
Eleven public sales of the 12 October 1979 ticket, 16 graded copies, and three slabs that have each been through the market twice.
Front Row Auctions is opening the hobby's first ticket-only auction house
Howard Citron, Shaun Dougherty and Ryan Hotchkiss have built an auction house that sells tickets and nothing else, launching after the 2026 National. Their lots will run in our auctions section from the first sale.
30 things you must know if you're collecting or investing in tickets
Fees, regrading, autographs and rookie cards. The second set of graded ticket questions, including three where the data contradicts what the hobby repeats.
A preseason debut ticket is not the debut ticket, and the gap runs to 18x
Almost every great player has two or three first games, and only one of them counts. The other ones are catalogued, graded and listed in nearly identical language, and they sell for a fraction of the price.
Tickets at the 2026 National Sports Collectors Convention, and the market behind them
Tickets were on tables across the whole floor at the 46th National, a PSA 2 became only the second Willie Mays debut stub ever graded, and about 75 collectors turned up to the ticket meetup. The auction year between the two shows says the same thing.
Thirty questions about ticket collecting, answered from the data
The questions collectors ask most, answered in two sentences each from the largest set of graded ticket records in the hobby.
How much is a Jesse Owens gold medal ticket worth 90 years after Berlin
Owens competed on five days in Berlin and every session printed its own ticket. Across 89 graded sales, the number that decides the price is not which gold medal it is, but whether the ticket survived whole.
How much money the graded ticket market spends each month
$7,615,680 was spent on graded tickets in the 12 months to June 2026, against $3,630,456 the year before. The chart below tracks every month back to 2020 and updates itself as new results land.
How to value a graded ticket stub using population and sales data
Grade is one of four inputs, and on its own it is the weakest. Here is the method, worked end to end on a ticket where the same game produced sales from $600 to $23,180.
There are 84 Cristiano Ronaldo debut tickets and only nine have ever sold
Eighty-four copies are graded and nine have sold in public. The same PSA 2 stub grade made $5,700 in 2021 and $1,952 in February 2026.
The Jackie Robinson debut ticket now sells once a year, and never below $300,000
Fourteen copies of the 15 April 1947 stub exist. Five of them have ever changed hands, between $20,400 and $480,000, and the last four all cleared $300,000.
A LeBron James debut ticket sells for a fifth of its 2021 peak
The record for the 29 October 2003 LeBron James debut ticket was set in November 2021 and has not been approached since. Twenty-nine sales, 195 graded copies, and what one costs today.
Why the Jesse Owens Olympic debut ticket is worth less than it was in 2022
Twenty-two recorded sales, 60 graded copies, and a record set in 2022 that nothing since has come close to. The price history of the August 2, 1936 ticket from Jesse Owens' first Olympic race.
How much a Mickey Mantle debut ticket is worth
Fifteen public sales, 25 graded copies, and a record of $115,200. The full price history of the April 17, 1951 stub from Mickey Mantle's first major league game.
Every World Cup ticket auction result from Goldin's Global Football sale
Thirty-two graded football tickets closed in one Goldin sale on 26 July 2026 for $119,594. A Messi ticket PSA had never catalogued before took 27.5% of the money on its own.
What 2026 World Cup tickets actually exist, and which ones got you into the stadium
The first men's World Cup with no paper ticket still produced plenty to collect. Six physical formats came out of the tournament, and only one of them opened a turnstile.
How our ticket collecting database connects population, scans and sales
Does the ticket exist, which copies are out there, and what do they sell for. A ticket collecting database has to answer all three, and each answer lives in a different database. One 1947 Jackie Robinson stub shows how they connect.
LeBron James spans two grading eras, and his ticket population shows it
A 22-year career is long enough to be graded by two different worlds. PSA has graded 3,347 LeBron James tickets across 393 moments, and the ones from 2003 look nothing like the ones from 2020.
How one moment survives as a full ticket, a stub and a pass
One event becomes three separate collectibles, a full ticket, a stub and a pass, and the census shows they barely resemble each other. Messi's 2004 Barcelona debut survives as 4 fulls, 2 stubs and 12 passes.
Why a GEM MT 10 ticket is nearly impossible
A used ticket stub reaches PSA GEM MT 10 three times in a thousand. An unused full ticket does it forty times more often. Whether a ticket can be perfect is mostly decided before it ever reaches a grader.
The Lionel Messi ticket population, counted across 127 moments
A career told through the tickets that survived it. PSA has graded 1,304 Lionel Messi tickets across 127 moments, from a 2003 friendly against Porto to a 2023 Miami debut, and only 25 have ever reached GEM MT 10.
How many PSA graded tickets exist? We counted all 279,911
In July 2026 we counted the entire PSA graded-ticket population on one date: 279,911 graded copies across 69,676 items. Here is that market mapped by era, grade, rarity and price, and the baseline every future count is measured against.
How To Search The PSA Ticket Pop Report In Seconds
The PSA ticket pop report holds the most useful fact in graded tickets: how many of a ticket exist at each grade. That is the supply behind every price. The number is public, but PSA's own report makes it slow to reach. Here is what the report measures, where it gets hard to use, and how to search the same data in one line.
A graded full ticket is not always a ticket anyone could enter with
The market pays more for a full ticket than a stub, but 'full ticket' hides very different objects: genuine seated entry tickets, printer's proofs, and press, media, photo and TV passes that never admitted anyone. Messi's Argentina debut shows the problem, sixteen graded fulls and only one a real stadium-entry ticket.
The most-graded tickets are the moments people knew to keep
A ticket's population does not measure how rare it is, it measures whether the world knew to keep it. The most-graded tickets are the games everyone understood were historic as they happened, while the debuts of then-unknowns survive in single and double digits, and command the records.
Modern graded tickets are starting to behave like trading cards
Vintage tickets are priced by survival, so the lowest grades cost the most. Modern graded tickets flip that: stadiums went digital, stubs disappeared, full tickets and PSA 10s are everywhere, and price is moving onto the gem tier and the variation, the way it already works for cards.
How Michael Jordan's first game ticket sold for $468,000
The only complete, unused ticket from Michael Jordan's October 26, 1984 NBA debut sold for $468,000, the highest price ever paid for a basketball ticket. We break down the sale, the population behind it, and where Jordan debut prices have moved since.
Why the most valuable graded ticket we track is only a PSA 2
The most expensive ticket in our data is a battered PSA 2. That is not a fluke, it is how the market works. Across 73,843 graded tickets and more than 17,000 sales, the grade barely sets the price, lower grades often sell for more, and only a gem-mint 10 earns a real premium. Graded tickets break the card-collecting rulebook.
The ticket grading habits you can read from PSA cert numbers
Cert numbers expose how collectors actually grade tickets. Across 73,843 graded tickets, almost nobody submits just one, the average submission runs about five, and autographs cluster so hard that a batch is either all signed or all unsigned, almost never both.
Jesse Owens ticket prices, and why each of his four golds is its own rarity
Jesse Owens won four golds at the 1936 Berlin Olympics across six dated sessions, and each one is a separate ticket. We pulled 91 graded sales and read the live PSA population on every race: most survive in single digits at the top grades, which is why a stub trades for four figures.
What actually drives a graded ticket's price once its population gets high
On modern tickets that exist in the hundreds, the PSA grade is the lever the market pulls first and the weakest of the real price drivers. The signature, the finest-known copy and the rarer access tier move the money. High population is what exposes the gap.
Goldin auction ticket sales put soccer's greatest debuts at a fraction of American sports
Goldin's mid-June 2026 auction closed 200 graded ticket lots for $341,000. Timed to the 2026 World Cup, the card leaned hard into soccer, and against the live PSA population report it exposed a clear pattern: the rarest tickets did not sell for the most. The name and the moment did. Soccer's biggest debut tickets still trade far below American-sport debuts, though the fair comparison is the club debut, not the World Cup debut.
The 1980s are the most valuable decade in graded ticket sales, and it's almost all Michael Jordan
We grouped every graded ticket sold since 2020 by the decade its event took place in. The 1980s lead on total value, the 1990s on units, and the 1940s on price per ticket. The 2000s, with Brady, Messi and LeBron, come second.
Full ticket vs stub sells for about double at the same grade, and up to 15x on vintage games
Match the same game at the same grade and a full ticket sells for about double the stub, and up to 15x for vintage games where intact fulls barely survived.
Graded ticket sales have reached $28.5M across 16,724 auction results, and that's a floor
We track every graded ticket sale we can across three auction houses: 16,724 results worth $28.5M, and 92% of that value has changed hands since 2019. That figure is a floor, not a ceiling. It leaves out eBay, private deals and card-show sales entirely.
Woodstock ticket prices break the rule because the pristine 1969 ticket is the common one
We pulled every graded 1969 Woodstock full-ticket sale in our database, 254 of them, against PSA's population of 4,663. The result is the rarest thing in the hobby: a 56-year-old icon where the pristine ticket is the common one, and the worn survivor is the scarce one.
Michael Jordan ticket prices are the most concentrated market in the hobby
We pulled every graded Michael Jordan ticket sale in our database, 1,187 of them, to chart the most concentrated market in the hobby: a $468,000 rookie debut, a clear premium ladder of milestones, and the low-population stubs that quietly trade in five and six figures.
Messi ticket prices moved their ceiling off the debut and onto signed World Cup Final tickets
We pulled every graded Lionel Messi ticket sale in our database, 314 of them from 2021 to 2026, to chart how debut prices crashed, why the official debut barely trades, and how signed World Cup Final tickets became the new ceiling.