The population of the Roberto Clemente debut ticket is one, and that one sold for $121,334 in a VG-EX 4

The figures come from 160 Roberto Clemente ticket sales we track, June 2008 to August 2026, $397,637 in total, across the auction houses we aggregate plus archived eBay results. Every grade printed here was read from the PSA cert, not from the auction title; the five debut-week certs were confirmed on PSA's cert pages on 6 October 2026, and the three with slab photographs were read off the slab. Population counts are from PSA's report as read on 8 July 2026, with the debut-week certs re-read live on 6 October 2026. PSA keeps signed copies in a separate PSA/DNA index; none of the figures below include it.

Which game is the Roberto Clemente debut ticket from?

Clemente had two professional debuts before the one the hobby prices. His first contract, with the Santurce Cangrejeros of the Puerto Rican winter league, is dated 9 October 1952 (Baseball Hall of Fame); he spent the 1952-53 season on the bench and moved into the lineup as the leadoff hitter the following winter (SABR). Brooklyn signed him on 19 February 1954 and sent him to the Montreal Royals, where he played 87 games and hit .257 (SABR Baseball Research Journal). His first professional hit in North America came on 25 April 1954 at Buffalo, in the second game of a doubleheader after sitting out the first (Buffalo Bisons). Pittsburgh took him with the first pick of the Rule 5 draft on 22 November 1954 for $4,000 (Baseball Hall of Fame).

The major league debut is Sunday 17 April 1955, game one of a doubleheader against Brooklyn at Forbes Field. He batted third and played right field, went 1-for-4, singled off Johnny Podres in his first at-bat with a ball that deflected off Pee Wee Reese's glove, and scored on a Frank Thomas triple. Brooklyn won 10-3 (Retrosheet, SABR Games Project). The Santurce game is his professional debut. The Forbes Field game is the debut collectors buy, and it is the only one of the three for which PSA holds a ticket.

No photograph of the 17 April 1955 doubleheader is available under a free licence. This is the exterior of Forbes Field, where the debut stub was torn, photographed in 1909. The stub's own printing reads Pittsburgh Athletic Co., Inc., Forbes Field, Second Tier Reserved, $2.20, with $0.18 federal tax and $0.184 city tax itemised on the face.

How many Roberto Clemente debut tickets has PSA graded?

One. PSA's catalogue lists the 17 April 1955 stub as a single item inside the 1955 Pittsburgh Pirates stub set, and both the 8 July 2026 report and a live read of the cert page on 6 October 2026 return the same figure: 1 graded, a VG-EX 4, none higher. The two April games either side of it, which auction houses sell as his first game, hold six graded copies each. The Montreal Royals stubs from 1954 exist in PSA holders but not from his first game there, and the Santurce winter league has no Clemente-era ticket in the PSA catalogue at all.

The zero for Santurce is a finding, not a gap in our data. The only Santurce ticket PSA has ever graded is a 1949 Liga Profesional stub from before Clemente joined the club. Winter-league stubs from early-1950s San Juan were not kept the way a Forbes Field rain check was, and nothing from Puerto Rico in that decade has reached PSA. A Clemente Santurce ticket surfacing is unlikely, but a 1954 Royals stub with his name on the label did, three times, so it is not impossible. The same goes for a second 17 April stub: PSA has seen one in the years it has graded tickets, and the rain-check wording on its face means thousands were printed for that date.

Why did a VG-EX 4 bring $121,334?

Because the grade was never the point. Lelands sold cert 72448350 on 15 May 2023 for $121,334, the highest price we have recorded for any Clemente ticket and 2.5x the next one, a 3,000th hit full ticket at $48,815 in August 2026. It is one lot out of 160 and it holds 30.5% of every dollar in the Clemente sample. Section 222, Row C, Seat 9, second tier reserved, a rain check from the first game of the doubleheader. On the day it sold, PSA's report showed one copy. On 6 October 2026 it still shows one.

In a population of one, the grade carries no information about scarcity, only about condition, and condition is what a buyer gives up when the alternative is no ticket. The pattern holds across the pre-war and 1950s debuts we have written up: the Jackie Robinson debut ticket sells about once a year and never below $300,000, and the Mickey Mantle debut stub set its record at $115,200. Clemente's single sale sits between the two, with a population smaller than either.

Is the first game in Pirates uniform stub the same ticket?

No. The $13,379 Lelands lot of August 2023, cert 76084685, is a Brooklyn Dodgers ticket for Ebbets Field dated Tuesday 12 April 1955. The game was rained out and played the next day, Brooklyn winning 6-1, and PSA's own label ends in DNP. Clemente was on the Pirates' roster for their season opener and did not get into the game. He did not appear until the Forbes Field doubleheader four days later. A second copy of the same stub, a PR 1, cert 117041342, brought $5,166 at REA in November 2025 under the same description.

There is a second first-game ticket, and it is a different game again. The Pirates' home opener at Forbes Field on Thursday 14 April 1955, lost 4-3 to Philadelphia, was also played without Clemente. Heritage sold a GOOD 2 of it as his first game in uniform for $1,980 in July 2022, the same cert 49489731 brought $2,250 at Fanatics Collect nine months later, and in August 2026 Heritage sold a MINT 9, cert 28219544, as his first day on a major league roster for $2,806. So the five first-game sales split across two games, neither of which he played in, and the Dodgers ticket in VG-EX 4 outsold the Pirates home-opener ticket in MINT 9 by 4.8x. The label text, not the grade or even the team, set the price.

Where has the Clemente ticket money gone?

The 3,000th hit is the liquid Clemente market. Its stub has sold 17 times since 2009, from $900 to $14,400 with a median of $2,468, and its full ticket has sold three times in two years, at $15,600, $40,260 and $48,815. The debut is the opposite: one copy, one sale, no second data point. A collector pricing a Clemente debut stub today has a single comparable and a population report that has not moved in three years.

What do collectors buy instead?

Six Clemente moments have real populations and repeat sales. The 1960 World Series Game 1 stub is the one most often sold with the word debut on it. It is his World Series debut, not his major league debut, and with 58 of its 75 graded copies at VG 3 or below it is a low-grade, low-price ticket. The 14 April 1955 Opening Day stub, covered above, is the nearest thing to a cheap entry into his first week, with the explicit note that he did not play.

One more item gets sold with Clemente's debut in the title: the 1955 National League annual pass, good for every N.L. park that season, which Goldin listed as covering the Clemente and Koufax debuts. Cert 85522366, an EX 5, sold for $732 in June 2025 against a population of 5 at that grade with 3 higher, read on 18 September 2026. It admitted its holder to the debut and to every other National League game that season. It is a season pass, not a debut ticket, and it is priced like one.

The Roberto Clemente debut ticket market is one slab. Until it changes hands again or a second Forbes Field rain check from 17 April 1955 reaches PSA, the price is $121,334 and the population is one. Everything else sold under his name as a debut is either his World Series debut, a game he sat out, or a pass that covered the whole season.