On a Peyton Manning debut ticket the print sets the price before the grade does

Every price here is one of the 20 public sales of a Peyton Manning debut ticket that we can tie to a PSA certificate number, June 2021 to May 2026, in the sold data we compile across Heritage, Goldin, Fanatics Collect and eBay. Nine were at Heritage, six on eBay, four at Goldin and one at Fanatics Collect. Grades are read from PSA rather than from auction titles. Population figures come from PSA's census of 8 July 2026 and were re-read live from PSA on 6 October 2026; the two readings agree on every unsigned item.

The debut and the first start are the same afternoon

Manning's official NFL debut is the regular-season opener on Sunday 6 September 1998, Indianapolis Colts against the Miami Dolphins at the RCA Dome, a 24-15 loss. Pro-Football-Reference lists it as game 1 of his career with the start marked: 21 of 37 for 302 yards, one touchdown, three interceptions, sacked four times. The Colts' own account of his firsts has the first pass going to Marshall Faulk on the opening play and the first touchdown a six-yard pass to Marvin Harrison, which the Dolphins' matchup history times at four seconds from the end. Unlike Tom Brady, whose first appearance and first start were ten months apart, Manning's two moments sit on one ticket.

The game drew 60,587, per the 1998 season record, and Sports Illustrated noted it was the dome's first sellout since 1989. Two earlier games get sold as a Manning debut and are not. His first game in a Colts uniform was a preseason fixture at Seattle on 8 August 1998, which CBS previewed the day before, and PSA labels those stubs "Pro Debut". His first college game was Tennessee against UCLA on 3 September 1994. Neither is the NFL debut, and both are priced in the last section. There is no earlier professional league to account for: Manning went from Tennessee to the first overall pick in April 1998 to this game.

One detail on the stubs confuses buyers. The arena print reads GAME 3. The Colts' season strip counted the two home preseason games first, 22 August against San Diego and 27 August against Detroit, so the opener against Miami was the third home game of the year. A stub marked game 3 is the debut.

PSA files one game under eight catalogue entries

PSA does not hold this game as one item. It is eight, split by what the ticket physically is: the arena stub, a Ticketmaster stub, a box office full ticket and matching stub, a pass, a Ticketmaster full ticket, a plain Colts full ticket and an owners box full ticket. Each has its own population. Read live on 6 October 2026, the unsigned index holds 49 copies, and the arena stub is nearly half of them.

PSA keeps autographed slabs in a second index, the PSA/DNA report, and the two sets are disjoint. Read the same way, the signed side holds 14 arena stubs, 3 Ticketmaster stubs, at least 2 box office stubs, 1 Colts full ticket and 1 owners box full ticket, so 21 signed copies and a combined population of about 70. The signed figure is a floor, because the PSA/DNA index can only be read one grade at a time. Open PSA's report for the arena stub or the Ticketmaster stub, or the same groups in our population database: arena stub, Ticketmaster stub, box office full, box office stub and Ticketmaster full.

Only seven unsigned full tickets exist across the eight items, and four of them have sold. The five box office fulls were graded together: certs 63749289, 63749290, 63749291 and 63749292 are consecutive numbers, graded EX-MT 6, NM 7, NM-MT 8 and NM-MT 8, one submission from one find. Three of the four have since been sold, at $3,720, $4,500 and $3,000. The fifth box office full, a GEM MT 10, and the second NM-MT 8 have never been offered.

The print sets the price, the grade barely moves it

A full ticket from this game has never sold below $3,000. An unsigned stub has never sold above $4,000, and the median unsigned stub is $1,225 across 12 sales. The median full ticket is $4,110. The form of the ticket decides the band; the number on the label does not. A PSA EX-MT 6 Ticketmaster stub made $4,000 on eBay in January 2022, while the PSA MINT 9 box office stub, the finest unsigned stub of any print, made $1,952 at Goldin two years later and $1,170 at Heritage six months after that. A PSA GOOD 2 arena stub made $1,860 in February 2023; two PSA EX 5 box office stubs made $630 and $456 in the following two months.

The most expensive unsigned stub. Cert 63266523, the Ticketmaster print of the debut, graded PSA EX-MT 6, sold on eBay for $4,000 in January 2022. PSA's unsigned population for this print is 12, three of them EX-MT 6 and one NM-MT 8 above. Its neighbour on the cert ladder, 63266524, is a VG-EX 4 of the same print from the same submission.

2022 took half the money

Eight of the 20 sales landed in 2022, including the $9,300 record and five more at $3,000 or above. The two years after it produced seven sales and none above $1,952. The one full ticket to appear since, the NM 7 box office full at $4,500 in October 2025, held the full-ticket floor. The two slabs that have sold twice both fell: the MINT 9 box office stub went from $1,952 in January 2024, on 61 bids, to $1,170 that July, down 40%, and the signed GOOD 2 arena stub went from $3,000 in November 2022 to $2,074 in May 2026, down 31%, on 16 and then 18 bids.

The dearest stub was never graded as a ticket

Goldin sold a signed debut stub for $7,800 in June 2021, the highest price any stub from the game has made. Read off the slab, the label is a PSA/DNA Authentic Auto certificate, number 83802754, with no ticket grade: it authenticates the signature and nothing else. The stub itself, gate 3, aisle 325, row 1, seat 103, is not in PSA's ticket population and PSA's ticket cert lookup does not return the number. It is a real sale of a real debut stub, and it is also why the arena-stub record among graded copies is $1,860, not $7,800.

Signed copies are a market of their own. The Fanatics Collect sale of a PSA VG-EX 4 arena stub with an Authentic autograph made $3,960 in July 2022, more than any unsigned arena stub has ever made. The signed GOOD 2 with a MINT 9 autograph made $3,000 and then $2,074. Two further eBay results we track, a signed PSA 4 at $4,999.99 in September 2025 and a PSA 4 at $3,499 in July 2026, are not in the count because no certificate number could be confirmed from the listing.

Cert 64318185, the arena stub graded PSA GOOD 2 with the signature graded MINT 9 by PSA/DNA. Goldin catalogued it in May 2026 as one of two at its tier in the PSA/DNA census with eight higher, which is consistent with the 14-copy signed population we read. It sold for $2,074 after 18 bids, having made $3,000 in November 2022.

Every sale we can tie to a cert

One lot that a title search returns is deliberately not here. Goldin sold a $12,000 signed full ticket in March 2021 whose title names Manning, but the cert, 43911625, belongs to Tom Brady's first NFL start on 30 September 2001, a Patriots game against the Colts. It is a Brady ticket that mentions Manning, and it is counted in the Brady debut post, not this one.

The finest unsigned stub of the debut in any print: cert 77668927, the box office stub graded PSA MINT 9, the only copy of its item above EX 5. It sold at Goldin for $1,952 in January 2024 on 61 bids, the most bids on any lot in this set, and at Heritage for $1,170 six months later.

The other Manning firsts collectors buy

Manning's catalogue runs to 273 PSA ticket items across 146 headings and 1,644 graded copies in the 8 July 2026 census, so the debut competes with a long list of other moments. These are the ones that sell most often alongside it or instead of it. Populations are the 8 July 2026 census; sales are the cert-confirmed records we hold for each group.

The two Super Bowls show what a population of several hundred does to price: a PSA 10 Super Bowl XLI full ticket with Manning as MVP sold for $800 on eBay in February 2024, less than a GOOD 2 stub of the debut. The debut's 49 unsigned copies are the smallest supply of any Manning moment with a regular market, and the only one where a full ticket starts at $3,000.

The current band, then. An unsigned stub of the debut in any print is a $450 to $2,000 item on the last three years of results, with the Ticketmaster print at the top of that range. A full ticket is $3,000 to $4,500 on the four that have sold, and the only GEM MT 10 to appear made $9,300 in the strongest year the market has had. Three graded full tickets have never been offered: the box office GEM MT 10, the second box office NM-MT 8, and the plain Colts full ticket at EX 5.