Male Loneliness is Good, Actually

In 1984, someone paid $8.50 for a piece of paper (technically, two pieces of paper).

38 years later, that ‘investment’ outperformed Apple stock by 35X — selling for $468K in 2022.

Here’s the story of the only “full” ticket from Michael Jordan’s debut game in existence 👇

But before we jump in, I wanna make sure everyone is on the same page.

1) Tickets from memorable and/or significant games, like Michael Jordan’s debut, have long been collector’s items and recently experienced extraordinary growth (followed by a serious contraction)

2) For many, the appeal of ticket collecting comes down to rarity: Tickets were not supposed to be kept, meaning they are scarce by default - especially when one compares them to trading cards. This graphic from @hallofstubs on IG illustrates this quite well.

3) The identifier of ‘Full’ ticket means the ticket was unused and therefore never ripped into a stub by the gate attendants. These tickets are generally rarer and command a premium as a result — after all, who in their right mind would buy a ticket to MJ’s debut and not go? Until 2022, nobody had ever heard of a full ticket to the MJ debut game.

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Mike Cole was a freshman at Northwestern when he saw that the Washington Bullets would be in town for a game.

He nabbed 2 tickets from a family friend who worked for the Bullets… but none of his buddies wanted to tag along.

So Cole picked up his tix at Will Call, using 1 for admission & keeping the other as a keepsake.

Years went by.

Old tickets were hardly front of mind.

Then one day that all changed.

Waking up from a nap on the couch a few months ago, a headline flashed on the TV. “Michael Jordan’s 1984 Debut Ticket Sells for a Record $264,000 at Auction” Cole wiped the sleep out of his eyes and ran downstairs.

Inside a box filled with various mementos was a piece of paper that would change his life forever.

The full ticket from MJ’s debut.

There are no other full tickets known to exist from MJ’s debut, and certainly none with a story like this one.

After sending to be authenticated, it hit the auction block.

It would have been the most expensive ticket ever sold... Except for the fact that a Jackie Robinson Debut Stub sold in the same auction for $480K.

Since then, a 1934 Masters Ticket set the record, selling for $600K.