The last 30 days of graded ticket sales came down to four days

Every figure here comes from the 259 graded ticket sales we recorded between 3 August and 2 September 2026 across the four houses we aggregate: Heritage Auctions, Lelands, Goldin and Fanatics Collect. Together they realised $1,269,408. Prices are what the buyer actually paid, premium included. Nine multi-item collection lots were removed so that no single price covers a stack of tickets. eBay is not in this sample. Its sold results are not part of the archive behind this post, so a private-treaty or eBay sale in the same window would not appear.

The market only opened on twelve days

Graded tickets do not trade continuously. They trade when a catalogue closes. Across the 30 days there were only 12 days on which any graded ticket sold at all, and four of those (21, 22 and 23 August, then 1 September) accounted for $1,104,846 of the $1,269,408, or 87%. Those same four days carried 171 of the 259 lots.

This is the practical consequence for anyone holding a ticket: you cannot sell into this market on a chosen date. The 23 August session alone moved $376,574 across 84 lots, more than the other eight selling days combined. A seller who misses a major catalogue deadline waits weeks, not days, for the next comparable audience.

Most lots are cheap, and most of the money is not

The median lot sold for $1,464, the average for $4,901. That gap is the whole shape of the month. 115 lots, 44% of everything sold, went for under $1,000, and all of them together came to $40,551, or 3.2% of the money. At the other end, 13 lots took 45.7%. Entry to this market is cheap and the top of it is not, and the two ends barely interact.

The same ticket sold twice, at two different houses

A single month rarely produces clean comparables. This one did, three times over, because the same items came up at different houses within days of each other. The sharpest case is the 1974 "Rumble in the Jungle" press ticket. Our July 2026 population census records four graded, of which exactly two sit at PSA 1.5. Both of those two sold inside this window, ten days apart.

Heritage, 22 Aug, PSA 1.5, $13,420

Lelands, 1 Sep, PSA 1.5, $26,495

Same item, same grade, $13,420 against $26,495. The Lelands copy drew 29 bids and its listing cited the population of two, which our census independently confirms. A third Ali lot, the on-site full ticket in PSA Authentic, took $22,393 at Heritage on 21 August. Two other pairs repeated the pattern: the 1962 Wilt Chamberlain 100-point stub sold at PSA 3 for $42,700 (Heritage, 21 August) and then at PSA 4 for $48,815 (Lelands, 1 September), and Ruth's 1948 farewell sold as a PSA 8 full ticket for $97,600 on 22 August and as an Authentic stub for $9,150 the next day, both at Heritage.

At the top, buyers paid for population, not condition

None of the month's biggest prices went to a high grade. The top ten lots included a PSA 3, a PSA 1.5, a PSA 2 and an Authentic. What they had instead was scarcity, and our population census of 8 July 2026 shows it. Ruth's 1921 World Series Game 4 stub, the ticket to his first World Series home run, sold for $52,460 at PSA 1.5: PSA has graded four of them and the other three are all Authentic, making this the only numerically graded copy in existence. Mickey Mantle's 1951 debut stub took $70,150 at PSA 3, and PSA 3 is the highest grade on record for that item across 25 graded. LeBron James' 2003 debut full ticket made $24,323 at PSA 8, with 32 graded and only four above it.

Ruth's 1921 World Series Game 4 stub, the only numerically graded example of the four PSA has recorded, sold for $52,460 on 22 August. A PSA 1.5 is a heavily worn ticket. It made the month's third-highest price because the alternative is not a better copy, it is no copy.

Heritage took nearly two thirds of the money

Heritage sold 35% of the lots and took 63% of the money, with a median lot of $3,233. Fanatics Collect sold nearly as many lots (40) at a median of $165, a little over one twentieth of Heritage's. These are different businesses aimed at different buyers, and a seller choosing between them is choosing an audience, not just a commission rate. Lelands is the notable one: 60 lots for $276,497, second on money despite selling fewer lots than Goldin, on the strength of a single 1 September session.

The fifteen biggest sales of the month

Babe Ruth was the month's most valuable subject, with 10 lots for $197,816 across the 1921 and 1948 tickets. Shohei Ohtani and Michael Jordan were the most frequently traded, at 11 lots each, but for far less money ($63,628 and $43,215). That split is the market in one line: the volume is in modern names and the money is in items from before the war.

Of the 259 sales, 223 were PSA-graded, 19 BGS, and the rest ungraded or unrecorded. We resolved 161 lots to a PSA certificate in our own scan records, and in every one of those cases the certificate agreed with the grade in the auction title. That check matters, because auction titles routinely misstate grades, and a price ladder built on the title text rather than the certificate can invert the answer entirely.