Tom Brady debut tickets made $458,400 in one month of 2022 and $259,657 in the three years after

The 52 sales are every single-ticket public result for the 23 November 2000 game that we track across Goldin, Heritage, Fanatics Collect, SCP and the eBay results in our archive, from $1,500 on 16 January 2017 to $5,185 on 10 May 2026. The set was built from PSA's own item numbers and cert numbers, not from lot titles, and 49 of the 52 grades below were read from PSA's record of the cert rather than from the auction listing (the exceptions are a signed Heritage full with no cert in the listing, a BGS 6 full, and a PR 1 stub whose cert PSA has since deactivated). Two rows were left out, a 367-ticket Brady archive that Lelands sold as one lot, and an $81 eBay result whose cert belongs to a preseason stub. Population figures are PSA's census of 8 July 2026, with the key certs re-read live on 6 October 2026.

Which game is the Tom Brady debut ticket?

Thursday 23 November 2000, Thanksgiving Day, Detroit Lions 34, New England Patriots 9, at the Pontiac Silverdome in front of 77,923. Brady, the 199th pick of that April's draft, came on for one series with a little over four minutes left and went 1 of 3 for 6 yards, the completion to tight end Rod Rutledge. Both the box score and the Boston Globe's account agree on every one of those facts. It was his first regular-season NFL game, which is what the hobby means by a debut. He had already played preseason football in a Patriots uniform, starting with the Hall of Fame Game on 31 July 2000, and those tickets are catalogued and sold under his name too. They are not the debut, and our preseason post measures the gap between the two. Michigan, where his first appearance came against UCLA on 28 September 1996, is college football, not a professional debut, and it goes in the table at the end.

One more date needs separating out, because the brief for this piece had it wrong and so do a lot of listings. Brady's first NFL start was Sunday 30 September 2001, Patriots 44, Colts 13, at Foxboro Stadium. A week earlier, on 23 September, he had come off the bench against the Jets after Mo Lewis's hit put Drew Bledsoe in hospital, going 5 of 10 for 46 yards. That was a relief appearance; the game log marks 30 September as the first start and the Patriots' own recap has him at 13 of 23 for 168 yards. The first start is a separate ticket with its own population and its own price, covered further down.

How many Tom Brady debut tickets has PSA graded?

Seventy unsigned copies, spread over seven lines of PSA's report, as of 8 July 2026. Two different tickets were printed for the game. The box-office ticket is a plain Ticketmaster print with the game details in blue type, and the season-ticket-book version carries the Lions' 61st Thanksgiving Classic artwork with a 1934 history panel. PSA keys each design and each form separately, so the box-office full has 4 graded copies, the season full has 7, and the stubs run to 58 across four separate report lines, plus one sideline pass. Read live on 6 October 2026, the NM-MT 8 box-office full (cert 64961403) still shows a population of 1 with none higher, and the NM 7 below it reads 1 with one higher, which matches the July census exactly.

Three caveats on that count. Signed copies are graded into PSA's separate PSA/DNA index and are not in the 70; we hold 18 signed certs for this game, 12 fulls and 6 stubs. At least two more unsigned fulls on older certificates, an NM-MT 8 (46426295) and an NM 7 (46426296), are still valid on PSA's site but no longer appear on any of the seven lines, so the true unsigned count is a little above 70. And PSA has deactivated five certificates we had indexed to these lines since the census, among them the PR 1 stub Heritage sold for $2,040 in January 2024, so the figure is a reading on a date, not a fixed total. Brady is second in the whole hobby by graded copies, but almost none of that volume is this game; his Super Bowl XXXVI full ticket alone has 1,100 copies.

What happened in February 2022?

Seven debut tickets sold between 7 and 27 February 2022 for $458,400. The $175,200 record on 7 February (cert 46492097, NM 7 with a MINT 9 signature, inscribed "NFL Debut", 24 bids) and a $153,600 twin on 25 February (cert 59717540, NM 7 with a GEM MT 10 signature, 28 bids) were both signed box-office fulls at Goldin. Heritage sold the only MINT 9 box-office stub for $40,800 and a signed Authentic stub for $39,600 on the same night, and the month also took $26,400 for a VG 3 season stub, $12,000 for a VG-EX 4 stub and $10,800 for an Authentic stub. The whole of 2022 reached $638,120 across 17 sales. Every sale since 1 January 2023, 24 of them to 10 May 2026, adds up to $259,657.

The two signed fulls came back to market within a year and told the rest of the story. The record slab made $24,244 at SCP on 2 May 2023, 86% below its February 2022 price, and the $153,600 ticket made $16,800 at Fanatics Collect on 16 March 2023, 89% below. The fall was not confined to signed copies. The MINT 9 stub went from $40,800 to $8,400 at Heritage in December 2024, and the VG 3 season stub that took $26,400 on 8 February 2022 resold at Goldin on 10 May 2026 for $5,185. The median sale before 2023 was $16,300; from 2023 onwards it is $6,795. That is the same direction we measured across all of Brady's tickets after his February 2023 retirement, where his median halved while the market as a whole rose.

Does the signature explain the prices?

Partly. Signed fulls have a median of $23,180 over 13 sales against $17,400 for the 9 unsigned fulls, and signed stubs a median of $17,080 over 5 sales against $5,185 for the 25 unsigned stubs. But the highest unsigned price, the $58,800 paid for the NM-MT 8 box-office full in June 2022, beats every signed sale except the two February 2022 fulls and the $73,200 paid in October 2021 for an EX-MT 6 with a GEM MT 10 autograph. What the signed prices share is a source. Certs 46492071, 46492097, 46492098, 46492099 and 46492100 are consecutive, which means one submission: four signed, inscribed box-office fulls and one signed stub, all with the TriStar sticker, released through Goldin and Heritage between September 2020 and February 2022 for $7,200, $175,200, $73,200, $15,600 and $39,600, $310,800 from a single find. The $15,600 ticket from that run is the one slab in the set that has risen on resale, to $20,130 at Heritage in October 2025.

Is the first start the same ticket?

NFL debut, 23 Nov 2000, NM-MT 8, $58,800

First start, 30 Sep 2001, GOOD 2, $915

The first start has a bigger population and a far smaller price. PSA has graded 86 copies, 77 of them stubs on one report line and 6 fulls on another, against 70 for the debut. We track 22 sales from $262 to $9,000, the top being a signed Authentic stub (cert 42060038, GEM MT 10 autograph) at Goldin in April 2022, and the highest unsigned price is $4,500. The median first-start sale is $735; the median debut sale is $11,700, sixteen times as much. Listings that call the Colts game a debut, or the Lions game a first start, are mislabelled, and the price will tell you which one is in the slab.

What else do Brady collectors buy?

Five other Brady firsts are catalogued and traded next to the debut. Each line below gives PSA's population from the 8 July 2026 census and the sale range we have tracked for that moment, with grades read from the certs. Only one of the five, the Hall of Fame Game, is routinely sold as a debut, and it is a preseason game.

The Michigan game is the one that needs the most care. His first pass as a Wolverine, in the fourth quarter of a 38-9 win, was returned 42 yards for UCLA's only touchdown by Phillip Ward, which both the box score and Sports Collectors Digest record. It is a genuine first and a rarer full ticket than the NFL debut, with 46 graded, but it is a college game and PSA labels it "NCAA Debut". Super Bowl XXXVI sits at the other end: the most-graded Brady ticket by a distance, which is why a copy can be had for $30 and why a GEM MT 10 of it is the usual way to own a Brady ten.

The Tom Brady debut ticket has 70 unsigned graded copies, a record of $175,200 set in February 2022, and a market that has paid a median of $6,795 since the start of 2023. Seven sales in one month of 2022 took in more than the 24 that followed over the next three years, and the two slabs that set the peak have both resold for less than a sixth of it.