The Wayne Gretzky debut ticket that made $158,600 was not from his first professional game

Indianapolis, 14 October 1978, WHA

Chicago, 10 October 1979, NHL

Gretzky's professional career did not start in the NHL. He signed with the Indianapolis Racers of the World Hockey Association at 17 and played his first professional game on 14 October 1978, the Racers' season opener against the Winnipeg Jets at Market Square Arena, a 6-3 loss (Hockey-Reference, The Hockey Writers). He played eight games for Indianapolis before his contract was sold to the Edmonton Oilers on 2 November 1978 (Hockey-Reference, Wikipedia). The Oilers joined the NHL the following season, and his first NHL game was 10 October 1979 at Chicago Stadium, a 4-2 loss to the Black Hawks in which he assisted on Kevin Lowe's power-play goal, Edmonton's first in the league (Hockey-Reference game log, Oilersnation). The WHA was a competing major league, not an exhibition circuit, so the Indianapolis game is his professional debut and the Chicago game is his NHL debut. PSA catalogues both. This post prices both, from the sales we track across Heritage, Goldin, REA and eBay, with every population figure read from PSA's report on 8 July 2026 and every grade taken from the PSA cert record rather than the lot title.

The Racers ticket

The Racers were losing money and folded six weeks after Gretzky left, which is the first reason so little from his Indianapolis weeks survives. PSA's report lists four graded tickets from 14 October 1978 across the two formats it catalogues: one full ticket, graded GOOD 2, and three stubs, two of them Authentic and one EX 5. A fifth item, a WHA media pass stamped valid for both his first game and his first goal six days later, has two graded copies. Signed copies would sit in PSA's separate PSA/DNA index, and we have found none.

The market has priced the Racers debut exactly once in public. Heritage sold a stub described as "Pop 1 of 1" on 18 August 2019 for $18,000. The lot did not disclose a cert number we can tie to one of the three stubs PSA has since counted, so we cannot say which of them it was, or whether it has since been regraded. Nothing from the night has been offered since, and no raw copy has appeared in the eBay and WorthPoint records we hold. The neighbouring Indianapolis dates give a sense of what a copy would bring today: the full ticket from his first professional goal, 20 October 1978 against Edmonton, cert 15413340, made $940 in January 2012, and a VG 3 stub from his sixth professional game, at Birmingham on 27 October 1978, cert 85414010, made $10,000 on eBay in April 2024. A second Racers debut stub surfacing is unlikely, given four copies in 48 years, but the eBay result says that when one does, it will not be priced as a curiosity.

The Chicago stub

The Oilers' first NHL game was a road game, so the debut ticket is a Chicago Stadium stub, printed by the Black Hawks, not an Edmonton ticket. PSA files it under its own set, "Chi. Black Hawks / Oct. 10 - Stub", and the report on 8 July 2026 showed 18 graded copies. Nothing is a GEM MT 10. One MINT 9 and one NM-MT 8 sit at the top, and the two of them account for the two biggest prices ever paid. We re-read the figure off the open cert pages on 17 and 18 September 2026 and it had not moved: the Authentic copies read 4 at grade with 14 graded higher, which is 18.

Eighteen is a small population for the biggest name in hockey, and it is small for a reason: an October 1979 Black Hawks home game against a first-year expansion team was not an occasion anyone kept a stub from on purpose. There is also a Black Hawks pass valid for the game, of which PSA has graded one copy (NM-MT 8), and a Ticketron-format stub heading with no census reading. The 18 stubs are the item the market trades. For scale, the Jordan first game ticket from five years later has sold for $468,000; the Gretzky equivalent reached a third of that only in October 2025.

The record

The record slab is cert 42668324, the only MINT 9 in the population, with nothing graded higher. It has sold twice. Robert Edward Auctions sold it on 1 November 2020 for $11,400. Heritage sold the same slab on 26 October 2025 for $158,600, 13.9 times the 2020 price, five years later. Before that night the most anyone had paid for the Chicago stub was $27,600. Within seven months the NM-MT 8, cert 79018949, made $88,450 and a GOOD 2, cert 64120611, made $21,350. Three sales above $20,000 inside twelve months, after four sales in the five years before that never reached $30,000.

Every sale

Seven sales of six slabs, $336,175 in total, median $21,350. The three results since October 2025 are $268,400 of that, 80% of every dollar ever spent on the ticket. Grade explains the two big numbers and little else: the Authentic copy Heritage sold in November 2023 made $27,600, and the Authentic copy Goldin sold seven months later made $16,775 on 25 bids, while a GOOD 2 in May 2026 made more than either. Twelve of the 18 copies have never been offered in the period we track: two of the four Authentics, both VG 3s, both EX 5s, all three EX-MT 6s and one of the two NM 7s.

Put the two debuts side by side and the gap is narrower than the headline suggests. The NHL debut has a median of $21,350 across seven sales. The WHA debut's one sale was $18,000, in 2019, before any of the three big NHL results. Buyers have treated the Indianapolis game as a real first, as we noted in the preseason debut piece, where the Racers stub was the clearest case of a non-NHL debut holding its value. What the Chicago stub has that the Racers ticket does not is a supply of 18 and a top grade worth chasing, and that is where the record came from.

Other Gretzky firsts and lasts

Collectors who cannot find or fund a debut stub buy the moments around it. Populations below are from the 8 July 2026 report, sales from our archive, grades from PSA.

First NHL goal. Four days after Chicago, at home to Vancouver, with four graded tickets in total: three stubs and one full. The GOOD 2 stub, cert 46388786, made $3,120 at Heritage in May 2020 and the Authentic one, cert 44060114, $1,380 three months earlier. Neither has been back to market since the debut stub re-priced, so the current gap between the two games is unmeasured. Kings debut. The 6 October 1988 game is the most common Gretzky first, 18 graded across a box-office full ticket, a standard full and a stub, most of them NM-MT 8 or better. Six sales run from $239.12 to $720 for a PSA 8; a signed NM 7 with a GEM MT 10 autograph made $690. Rangers debut. Two graded copies of the 5 October 1996 tie in Boston, one sale, a FR 1.5 stub for $88.88 on eBay in 2024. Final game. The 18 April 1999 Rangers stub is his most-graded ticket at 58 copies, and sixteen sales run from $79.99 to $2,562 for a FR 1.5 signed by Wayne and his father Walter, cert 65157382, a slab that had made $630 and $649.20 in the two years before. Unsigned copies top out at $660 for a NM-MT 8 full ticket.

Two Racers-era tickets are sometimes offered as his first game and are not. A stub from the 10 October 1978 preseason game against Birmingham (Racers 8, Bulls 5) exists as a single PSA 8, and a stub from the 23 September 1978 Blue and White inter-squad scrimmage as a single PSA 3. Both predate the Winnipeg game, both are catalogued under the same Racers stub set, and neither is a professional debut. Neither has sold in the period we track.

A Wayne Gretzky debut ticket is two different objects. The professional debut is a four-copy Indianapolis ticket that has been priced once, at $18,000 in 2019, and a further copy surfacing is unlikely but not impossible. The NHL debut is an 18-copy Chicago stub whose price moved from a $27,600 ceiling to a $158,600 record in October 2025 and has held above $20,000 at every grade offered since. Anyone buying either should check the cert against the population report first, because the grade on the label is doing most of the work at the top and almost none of it below NM 7.