Ticket Stubs and Game Programs

Collecting football memorabilia is an extremly fun and rewarding hobby. In this edition, Ray Durbin of Row One Brand visits the Pigpen to share with us his unique collection of both ticket stubs and game day programs and the reason he collects them.

You often hear us run the ads on Pigskin Dispatch for Row One Brand. The founder and owner of Row One, Ray Durbin has a very unique collection of sports memorbilia. Ray enjoys the emotions of having the game day tickets and programs in his hands. He takes it a step further too as his company then takes these treasures and incorporates them into art. We appreciate if you look at the Row One Brand website to see what we are talking about, because it is truly special and interesting. Please be aware that if you like what you see on Row One's Pictorem Gallery, use the offer code SHN15 and you will receive a 15% discount on your purchase and then some of the proceeds will go to the Sports History Network to help this program and others on SHN to bring you the events & people in sports history you enjoy.

One of the many ticket stubs that Ray has in his collection that is offered as art on Row One.

Ray tells us that his collection bug started back as a kid when he would buy baseball cards. He enjoyed looking for his favorite players, reading the information on the back of the card and trading them with his friends. The tangible connection to one's sports heroes is powerful. You are holding something in your hand that has the image of they guy you are watching, listening to or reading about belting that game winning homerun or scoring the winning touchdown. Ray's collection practice was abruptly halted in his teenage years when he came home one day and found that his mother had cleaned his room. Oh No! The card collection he saved in old cigar boxes was tossed to the rubbish heap and gone forever! I think many of us shared a similar experience of losing our cardboard treasures to clean up day.

Anyhow Ray tells us that it wasn't until years later as an adult he got the bug for collecting sports items again. This time it was the stubs and programs.  The stubs and programs are a bit different as they were not made to last through the ages to be collected. The paper and cardboard quality was often not of the hightest must durable grade where as collector cards of baseball and football were manufcatured to last. It was for different reasons though than the card collection as a kid. Ray brings up the point that cards are centered on an individual player for the most part and one's connection to them while programs and stubs have a bit broader appeal of teams. Collectors of stubs and programs can collect in many different genres too. Some collect only these items that their favorite college or pro team played in. Some take the souvenier of only a particular annual game such as the Rose Bowl, Super Bowl or army/Navy game for instance. Then others collect game stubs that had special significance in history ofthe game or a personal memory. Ray shares that he recently obtained a ticket from the 1963 Texas vs Oklahoma game that he attended on a whim with some buddies after his brother gave them tickets last minute and what a driving adventure they had.

On the historic significance collection front, Ray says his oldest football related piece is the program of the 1876 Harvard- Yale game which had Teddy Roosevelt playing for Harvard and a young Walter Camp on the Yale roster. Truly a great and rare piece.

Isn't that the best thing about collections? The personal and emotional connection to a memory from our past. So many of us have had great memories with loved ones and friends that have a sports connection and what better way to memoralize that sppecific memoory than to hold in your hand a representation of that by gone event.