Ticket Stubs and Football Game Program Collecting
Collecting football memorabilia is an extremely fun and rewarding hobby. In this episode Ray Durbin1 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.
-Transcript of Ticket Stubs and Programs Collectibles with Ray Durbin
Darin Hayes
Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of pigskidispatch.com. We are in the Pigpen today, and we are here to talk about the hobbies, games, toys, and collections that are associated with the game of football. And we have a very interesting topic today. We have Ray Durbin. Do you remember him? We had him back on Memorial Day, talking about the salutes of the great football players who had military service and their military service. Unfortunately, they passed in their service, and we honored them on that day, Memorial Day, as we should. Today, Ray is going to talk about collections with football, and we'll bring them in right now. Ray Durbin, welcome back to the Pigpen.
Ray Durbin
Well, I'm glad to be back here.
Darin Hayes
Ray, you know, you have a very interesting story that you were sharing with me before we came on and recorded here, and you were telling me a little bit about how you got your passion for row one, which we'll talk about in a little bit what you folks do there, but maybe your childhood memory of a collection you had, how it got you sort of into the sports memorabilia.
Ray Durbin
When I was a kid, a common activity was going out and playing a little baseball during the summer, getting up, and gathering up a bunch of kids to play. And then, if we had a little sandlot game, we would swap baseball cards. And back in the mid-50s, I remember, you know, having Hank Aaron cards, Mickey Mantle cards, Stan Musial, all the, you know, stars at that particular point in time. And also, we'd have some, you know, players who are probably not too noted. One that sticks in my mind because we always used to laugh about it is at the back of a baseball card; they'd have noteworthy achievements from that particular player. And there's a guy, I'm trying to think of his name. It was something like Scooter Malpmus or some name like that, and his nickname was Scooter. And about all they could say about this guy was one day stole a base or somebody or some really mundane achievement they could put down for Scooter. But anyway, we would, you know, try to swap the cards, and maybe 250 Scooter cards would be worth maybe one Wally Moon card. But anyway, that was our common activity. Back then, we would keep all the baseball cards and little cigar boxes. So it wasn't intended that this is something you're going to keep forever, or that we couldn't visualize, you know when you're eight, nine, 10, 11 years old, you don't visualize something like that having tremendous value the way it would now. And I mean, I know for a fact that we had Mickey Mantle cards. And now I think I'm not Mickey Mantle card, the rookie card or early card, you know, selling up in millions of dollars, we would be happy to trade a Mickey Mantle card, you know, for maybe half a popsicle or something. I had
Darin Hayes
similar experiences when I was younger. I was a little bit younger than you, a little bit different decade. I can remember we'd take the football cards, baseball cards, and the teams we don't really like. And in Western Pennsylvania, back then, the Raiders were sort of the big enemy of the Steelers. And I can remember, I think it was like a Phil Villapiano football card. I said I'm going to make my bike sound really cool. I'm going to connect it to the steering mechanism of my bike. So it hits the spokes and sounds like a motorcycle. You know, I'm sure all kids do that. Well, the curse of the Raiders got me because I was driving, driving my bike. I was going all the place with this card in there and ended up taking a couple of spokes out, and my whole tire collapsed. And I went flying over, you know, ass over 10 cups over the handlebars into the street. And I'm like, those doggone Raiders, they got me again, you know?
Ray Durbin
Well, I know back in the early days of Raiders, and that maybe it's continued, they had kind of a reputation of being so much like he sure outlaws, and There was sort of the bane of Western civilization, and it for a while. So I didn't know they also had sabotaged old kids' bicycles.
Darin Hayes
Yeah, he got me good. He got me good.
Ray Durbin
At any rate, the story with baseball cards and little cigar boxes, I had an older brother, I had a younger brother, we all collected baseball cards, everything. And sometime in the early sixties, my mother thought that this was enough, and we hadn't done anything with him for years. So she wound up discarding a lot of these baseball cards. And while I was saying earlier, if I had been able to come up with some legal theory to sue her, I would have. At the time, no one knew these things were going to be, you know, the value they are now. An interesting thing about baseball cards, and you're talking about football cards too, is that we used to collect football cards. And I don't know what it was like when you're collecting, but in the early mid-fifties, on the back of a football card, they would have a diagram of a play. Oh, okay. It might be like they'd have the lineups, and they'd have an offensive scheme and a defensive scheme. We're trying to work through that. You get over there, and you run this way and that way.
Darin Hayes is
running the X's and O's in the backyard. Exactly.
Ray Durbin
that was on the back of the card set. Wow, that's interesting. We always used to focus on the quarterback sneak because that was the easiest concept for us to understand.
Darin Hayes
Yeah, it's just one player in a straight line, right? In A -gaps.
Ray Durbin
But, but anyway, that that's, you know, I think a lot of kids go through that collecting baseball cards, and then it was popular for a while. I know in the late '70s and early '80s, a lot of people were collecting baseball cards again; my son probably taught me to spin and go anywhere to maybe have my retirement savings on baseball cards. But they still didn't have the value that some of these older cards did. The thing about, you know, baseball cards versus tickets, or any kind of sports card versus tickets, those are created with the idea in mind, you're going to collect them, you know, a baseball card, a football card, a basketball card. The idea is that that's something that's collectible, and they're intended, of course, you may get a lousy stick of bubble gum or something with it, but they're actually intended to keep and collect.
Darin Hayes
Ray, I just have a question for you. I know how the bubblegum tasted in the 70s in the baseball cards and football cards. It wasn't very good. Actually, I think maybe the cards tasted better than the gum. How was it back in the late 50s and 60s when you were collecting?
Ray Durbin
I think it was about the same. A lot of times, the bubblegum, of course, back then, the cards just came in a wax paper wrapper. So, a lot of times, bubblegum was pretty stale. And you're right; sometimes, it is hard to tell. They've come in like little squares about the size of a sports card, you know, a piece of bubblegum like that. And they were generally pretty stale.
Darin Hayes
They were consistent on the cards; they got more consistent through the years.
Ray Durbin
control. But anyway, you know, some of the difference between collecting tickets and scorecards and programs versus baseball cards, that sort of thing, or football cards, is the cards are intended to be collectible. When you go back to the 20s and even earlier 1910s, we have a couple of tickets from the 1800s. Wow. Those were not generally intended to be a collectible. They were to get into the game and be admitted to the game, and then people would stuff them in their pockets. They would, you know, get sweaty if it was hot. They would spill cokes on them, get mustard on them, all that kind of stuff. Very few people actually hung onto those. And if they did, they'd be tucked away in a scrapbook someplace. One main difference between collecting tickets and scorecards is that they weren't intended at the time they were created to be collectibles. They were basically intended to get you into the game or the sporting event, and you also have information about the players, the teams, and that sort of thing. So I think that's the main difference between collection and, you know, documentation of a historical event. Now, there are more people collecting tickets, and some of these things, particularly, I know, are sort of counterintuitive. But during the pandemic, a lot of people went back and started even making more of a demand for sports cards because there wasn't that much to do. They're more interested in going back and revisiting their old collection of sports cards. And the same thing with tickets. Tickets people started getting interested in collecting tickets, everything, because they had a lot of time on their hands, and at least there for a while, disposable income. And it was an interesting hobby, something to do. Now, the other thing about tickets, well, it's just like baseball cards. I think a lot of baseball cards or football cards or anything like that are focused on the individual. In other words, you can always go back in and try to collect the New York Yankee personnel, but it's sort of individual player-oriented. You collect Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron, and Al Kaline for the Tigers, and Bill Mazeroski, I think, played on the Pirates. It's sort of oriented toward the individual player. Tickets can be sorted, organized, and rearranged in a lot of different ways. For example, someone might want to focus on their favorite team. For example, if your favorite team is a Pittsburgh Steelers or Pittsburgh Panthers or Penn State or whatever your favorite team is, you can focus on trying to collect for that team. That's one way of doing it. Other people like to collect by conferences and in college, such as Southeastern Conference or Big Ten. Again, getting back to the team thing, if you're talking about college or maybe people focusing on the University of Michigan Wolverines, like the Ohio State Buckeyes, Texas Longhorns, whatever. They can have the team. Normally, on these tickets, you don't focus on an individual player, except you might say, well, Bobby Lane played in this game for the Lions, or Bobby Lane played in this game for the Steelers, or something like that. But a ticket generally doesn't feature a particular player, if that makes any sense. So the tickets, you can focus in on so many different aspects of if you're collecting to collect them. You might try to get your favorite team, as I understand, the Oakland Raiders. Where were they located now? Los Angeles, or where the heck are the Raiders? Las Vegas now. Las Vegas. So, you know, you can focus on the team. You can focus on the vent if you want, Super Bowl. Same in baseball. If you're looking at tickets, you can focus on the World Series. You can focus on all-star games. Focus on a significant event like the game where Hank Aaron hit the broke, tied, no broke Ruth's record. And I remember what that was. It was 515 or whatever his record was. I remember watching that on Publish as I washed my car and told my wife to call me in when he was up and back. So that was, I want to say it was in April 74. So, I mean, when you're looking at tickets or scorecards or anything like that, you can focus on the event, a particular event, a conference, a team, or the World Series Super Bowl. We have a lot of Pro Bowl tickets, some Super Bowl tickets, just a wide variety of items. So, you can narrow it down if you want to. If you're a collector of tickets or scorecards, something like that, you can narrow it down if you want to. We have, in the nature of row one, what we do; we approach it from the standpoint that we want tickets that have some historical significance. We also look at the graphics, the artwork on the ticket, as we were talking about before, you know, if it's something like, admit one, even that can be interesting because even these ticket stubs that are really kind of plain, they'll have the date on it, they'll have the price, they'll have the location, the teams that are playing off, and so even those can be real, interesting from a historical standpoint. So it's all in the eye of the beholder, I guess, what kind of graphics they like or what kind of historical information they have.
Darin Hayes
No, Ray, in the case of collecting ticket stubs or scorecards or the smaller items like that, how do folks display their collection? Is it like in a book? Do they put it up on a wall somehow? What's a common way to?
Ray Durbin
I, you know, I don't display the tickets as such because we enlarge them. But I know for a fact a lot of people will have them. They'll put them in an acrylic or hard plastic container. Other ones will get a little easel and put it on there. For example, if they have a desk in our office or something, I want to put it up. I'll put it in a case of some type and maybe put a little easel. Not too many people are going to hang a little thick it up on a wall, but anything is possible.
Darin Hayes
If they want to hang it, if that ticket means a lot, and they want to hang it on the wall, they can go to row one and buy a big lithograph of it to hang on the wall, right? Exactly.
Ray Durbin
some of our items have blown up. I mean, it's unlimited. It'd be an entire wall, but you know, some of the canvases and everything go up to 60 inches wide by whatever. So they're really pretty striking when you enlarge these tickets. And when you look at them, they have some really, really interesting artwork and graphics. So, you know, we look at it from a lot of different ways, a lot of different perspectives, and we try to have something for everyone. For example, we have a lot of Ohio State and Michigan games because that's a big rivalry. One way you can group these, we're talking about teams, conferences, that sort of stuff. Another way is rivalry games. And so we have a lot of Ohio State, Michigan, as well as just Michigan tickets and Ohio State tickets. We have a lot of Michigan and Ohio State rivalry games. We have, you know, other rivalries, California and Stanford. We have a lot of their tickets where they're playing each other, Oklahoma and Texas. In fact, we acquired one today, which is significant to me. It's the first OU-Texas game I went to in person. It was in 1963. So now they're getting back to why people collect these tickets. A big part of it is that it brings back an emotional experience they've had, a game experience that can relive it. It brings back memories. And I was looking at this ticket, and I remember that particularly because a whole group of us were driving down from Norman to Dallas for that game. And I was telling this story about a roommate who had sold Bibles that previous summer. So he had a gift for Gav. I mean, he was really, and as we're leaving town, we're driving out of Norman, we got pulled over by a policeman. So Joe hopped out of the car and ran up to the policeman. That was before, you know, the Taser you were shooting. He went up to that officer, got a car, ran up to his car so the officer didn't have to move or anything, and got his license for him. And then he wound up thinking, I didn't hear it, but he told us what had happened. He wound up thinking the officer was stopping. He said, you know, I'm a student at OU; I'm going down to the beginning with Texas, and I got a little excited. And I'm really, really happy that you stopped me. If you hadn't stopped me right now, I may have been speeding later on, and I could have heard someone. So, the cop wound up not giving him a ticket. Instead, he also pointed out where the speed traps were between Norman and Dallas. He said, now you want to watch it here; you got to be careful here. So I'm just saying that that's an experience I had. And so I was particularly happy to get that 1963 Texas-OU. So that acquisition
Darin Hayes
You got in 2021, and it takes you to have a memory back, and it was your buddy in the car. That's awesome.
Ray Durbin
And we have another; I have a ticket for the first game I ever went to, the Oklahoma game. I was Oklahoma Clemson. I already had that ticket. So you can go through anyone who is a college graduate or attended college or family, or maybe it's just someone who's always followed a particular team. Obviously, a team like Penn State has a lot of followers who didn't even attend Penn State, such as fans. So all these tickets, you get these old tickets, and they either relate to them because you saw the game on TV or you saw it in person or you attended college, and maybe the first bad hangover you had was the night before or whatever. And so it brings back a lot of memories. It's not nostalgic and all that kind of stuff. With that last comment,
Darin Hayes
you're bringing back a lot of my college days now.
Ray Durbin
I remember a ticket. I'm not going to bore you going over all these with some of my favorite tickets. I have a list and they we've already talked about some of them. We have the it's not actually the Super Bowl, but the first NFL championship game with the FC Green Bay and I think Kansas City Chiefs. We have that ticket. Wow. Have the first championship game. Yes, it's a football league game.
Darin Hayes
OK.
Ray Durbin
I have that one; there are just a lot of Pro Bowl games and different pro tickets.
Darin Hayes
What's the oldest ticket stub that you have in your collection?
Ray Durbin
uh, we have an 1876. It's actually a program, uh, but it looks sure I could take it that it's a program uh with Harvard and Yale, and what's interesting about that particular game, uh, I'm trying to think Harvard was undefeated, of course, yeah it was their second meeting a couple of things because I had talked about this before um 1876 teddy roosevelt was an uh freshman at Harvard so he was attending the game there's a guy by the name of Walter camp he uh was on uh yale and if I've told you this story before I really apologize
Darin Hayes
No, you, well, you did. We talked about this before, because I saw that one. And I knew the significance of the game, you know, making football history. And that was I purchased that cup that has that on there. I drink out of that, you know, a couple of times a week. So I love that one. That's a great one.
Ray Durbin
And, you know, the story is that Walter Camp was a freshman on the Yale team and the captain of the Harvard team; I think I have this story, right? Saw this guy only weighed 150 pounds. He said, you're not going to let him play, are you? He looks like a baby. He'll get hurt. I always liked that story because, you know, he went on to be instrumental in developing American football rules and everything. But some of the other tips you asked about are the oldest ones, a ticket, and a couple of really cool ones. One is an 1893 pin versus Princeton. Wow. University of Pennsylvania versus Princeton. That's a really good ticket. Those are kind of ornate. They're really fancy and elaborate things. Another early ticket that I like a lot, one of my favorites, is an 1896 Cincinnati versus Carlisle Indians. Oh, my goodness. Carlisle school, you know. And I think some of the language is really funny. It's like, you know, see Wild West Indians; they're really playing it up, and the graphics are pretty good there. Then, some of the earlier tickets are from 1907, Princeton, Yale, 1909, you know, Harvard, 1910, Dartmouth versus Harvard. Those were big.
Darin Hayes
games in that era. Those are organic games in the season.
Ray Durbin
And a lot of times, the teams would be undefeated or one way and go on and claim the national championship.
Darin Hayes
That's your Ohio State, Michigan and your LSU, Alabama games of this era. That's Yale, Harvard.
Ray Durbin
Exactly. There is Nate, a really pretty ticket. I'd like a ticket if it's. Yeah, I have it here. It's a 1923 Navy Penn State ticket. I like all these old tickets because you look at them and they have football and two different words. So it says, you know, see Navy Penn State College football. They have F -O -T -T in the space B -A -L -L. And a lot of the old tickets have it, you know, two separate words. But I like that ticket because it's just an attractive ticket and they have a little football shape on it and they show an actual photo of some action, you know, from 1922 or thereabout.
Darin Hayes
Before we go any further on your description, maybe the listeners can see the photos of these tickets because you have them in your artwork on row one. Maybe you could tell us where to look so maybe they could go to there while they're listening to this. Yeah.
Ray Durbin
that would be great. In fact, I have about two tablets and a cell phone here, too. They just want to look up and type in row one brand, all one word, row one brand.
Darin Hayes
W -O -N -E brand.
Ray Durbin
right .com, and they'll be able to pull that website up, and then as you scroll down, you'll come to a place where it says to go to the gallery, and there are currently about 6100 items on there of images, so they're not all tickets a large number tickets, but there's also scorecards and remixed artwork things like that, but that's a good way to do it, and also if you have a favorite team like Notre Dame or Penn State or Alabama or whatever up at the top of that when you go to a pictorum you should get on the pictorum gallery when you go to that there's a search box up top, and you just type in your favorite team it should pull up depending on the team it might pull up I just checked earlier baseball pulled up about 12 pages of different artwork on that I go to a team like Michigan or Notre Dame you'll pull up a lot of artwork old tickets and
Darin Hayes
Uh, and let me just give the listeners a real quick tip. If you happen to be on the Pigskin Dispatch site, we have an ad on the front page for row one; you can click on that. It takes you to the sports history network link. Also, if you're on sports history, network .com, click on the row. One link, it'll take you through there. And when in the pictorium gallery, uh, that Ray is talking about, uh, he's offered a special code for a sports history network listeners, she 15, get a 15% discount in the pictorial gallery. So, uh, take note of that and take advantage of it.
Ray Durbin
Yeah, that's a great point. That's a really good point. So, you know, there's just a lot of football tickets. We're talking about rivalries, Army Navy, and those are really interesting. We talked about Ohio State, Michigan, Southern California, Stanford, Alabama, Auburn, Oklahoma, Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and just any college rivalry you can think of. Plug it in, and see what you come up with. You might just have to go to one team or the other. Like, if you go to Army, you're going to pick up all the Army Navy tickets. You can try it now, and you can try the Army and Navy, too. But it's just fantastic artwork, in my opinion. And when you blow this stuff up, it makes really a unique piece of art. It's a historical, significant, interesting conversation piece.
Darin Hayes
It's so neat what you do on row one. You show different views of the ticket, but one of the images that you can click on of that ticket is to show it what it looks like hanging on your wall, and that's really cool. It really brings it to life, and before you buy it, it shows you, hey, that would look great in my living room or my den or something. That's a great feature that you have, too, so make sure you folks out there take advantage of that, too.
Ray Durbin
Yeah, I appreciate it. I'm pictorial, too. I'm, I'm glad you brought that. The other thing about that is that you can get these in various mediums, like, uh, you can get them printed on wood, which looks good. Uh, uh, metal signs. If, if you're, you know, have a game room or something and your crowd control, it's not quite up to par. You might want to get a metal sign. I'm kidding. Uh, so you don't have the cameras destroyed or anything, but there are all sorts of me a good medium chair, acrylic, wood, uh, canvas, paper, prints, it can be framed by us, all that kind of stuff. Do they? I would just end by saying we have a lot of different sports, uh, baseball, basketball, football, soccer, boxing, race car, any 500 tickets, Kentucky Derby tickets. There's a wide variety of sports. And we're, we're adding things daily. We're getting there, but we have a lot more items to add to the website.
Darin Hayes
Now, you mentioned a little bit earlier that during Covid and during the pandemic, there seemed to be a lot more people that started collecting again, you know, maybe having that extra time and they're scouring through the internet and say, hey, you know, I used to collect baseball cards or ticket stuff when I was younger. Now, did it drive the prices up for collectors because of the supply and demand type of thing, or did it help the collector?
Ray Durbin
You know, I can't answer that. I would suspect it would. But I've heard that in terms of the baseball tickets or baseball cards. I have come up a little bit. And my understanding is the same with the football tickets and programs and everything. A lot of our acquisitions were done prior to a couple of years ago. So.
Darin Hayes
OK.
Ray Durbin
uh you know at this point in time we're in the stage where hey if we see something unique uh that we're interested in and from a selfish standpoint you know we're talking about that 53 not 53 63 uh texas oklahoma ticket had a special emotional appeal to me uh so yeah we're in a daily basis but uh there for a while i mean you know it's just like uh had a special mail truck delivery where we're getting a lot of items in a couple years ago so i think the prices have gone up again we i'm i'm in a mode uh row one is in the mode and we're acquiring this we're not trying to resell them at this point in time uh different people have different approaches some people will buy something and then try to turn it sell it turn it whatever you want language i use we acquire the items from the standpoint of the uh how we think people will react to it from an emotional standpoint an artistic standpoint it's an interesting historical event but we're looking at from the from the standpoint of the image how how good a work of art will that make uh and the other thing we hadn't talked about we we also put these on other products uh i mean they're they look great on uh t -shirts and mugs uh shower curtains towels i i think one of the best items is is a beach towel or even a bath towel because uh uh the shape of a towel is almost like a a ticket
Darin Hayes
Right. I didn't even think of that.
Ray Durbin
and curtains and always just make really, really good designs if you're a sports fan or sports fanatic. Or if you like to take showers or baths.
Darin Hayes
Get it back. But we hope that our listeners like that. So
Ray Durbin
But there are a lot of good products out there, and they're interesting. I just like them from an aesthetic and a historical standpoint.
Darin Hayes
Okay, now, aside from I know you told us a feeling about the 63 OU Texas stub that you have of all your collection of program covers and ticket stubs. Let's just take that one, that latest acquisition, out of the mix here. What is your personal favorite, and maybe tell us why?
Ray Durbin
Well, it's tough. I guess. That's like telling you which was your fault.
Darin Hayes
favorite child, right? Exactly.
Ray Durbin
Exactly. I guess just from a, I fluctuate, here's another again, another thing, I look at these, and if I haven't looked at a particular ticket in a while, I'm like, wow, I always like that. You go to the head of the class. But I guess right now, while you're asking me, I think the ticket I really like is that 1896 Cincinnati Carlisle Indian ticket. It's so unique. The other ticket, from a personal selfish standpoint, is a good 1969 University of Michigan, Missouri ticket. And it's real free graphics. It shows the stadium, and I think, uh, uh, pennants with, uh, I believe, uh, Michigan, Missouri are on it. And, uh, Michigan needs that same theme for the home game. Show it the whole, whole year. They also have a ticket like that, a 69 Ohio State, Michigan ticket. But I liked the Missouri, Michigan ticket because a good friend of mine and his date, as well as my wife and I, went to that game, the Michigan, Missouri game. It was a beautiful day, a fall day, real nice weather. Uh, and we scrunched up in Ann Arbor's, you know, stadium. Uh, so I always remember that game, like it just happened, uh, yesterday, uh, another game. It's not all that aesthetic, but it's one of these tickets that has a lot of value. Uh, and it is a unique 1969 Texas OU ticket. That means a lot to me because this same friend of mine that we went to that game, you know, with Chris, my wife, and his date, uh, a few weeks later, he was getting ready to go into the Navy. I was going to be going into the Army at the end of October, and we decided on a lark. I think it will probably be a Wednesday or so. We found out that my older brother had a couple of tickets to the OU-Texas game. So we drove down from Detroit to Norman, picked up the tickets, and then headed back out, and then drove back. How old is that?
Darin Hayes
That's going to be quite a.
Ray Durbin
Oh, let me see. It's, well, we broke it up. We, uh, we drove straight through from Detroit to Norman. And at that time, I'm going to guess just about 21 hours a day, or, and then, it's about another six hours that I'll bet. It was, uh, it was a hike, but, uh, it was fun. It's well worth it. So those two tickets have a lot of meaning to me. Um, I guess that's not it. And my favorite, favorite tickets. I mean, there's a lot, though. Every time you look at it, really.
Darin Hayes
Right. Well, Ray, I appreciate you coming on today and sharing your collection and your passion with us. And again, folks, we have the row one links in our show notes. You can also find them on sports history, network .com, and pigskindispatch.com. Make sure you check out Ray's collection on row one and share that art with us. And I can hang it on your wall, drink your coffee out of it, and dry it off when you get out of the shower with it. There are many things you can do: put it on your car keys. So make sure you check those out. And, Ray, once again, thank you very much for joining us and telling us about this great collection.
Ray Durbin
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
-Transcript of Ticket Stubs and Programs Collectibles with Ray Durbin
Darin Hayes
Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of pigskidispatch.com. We are in the Pigpen today, and we are here to talk about the hobbies, games, toys, and collections that are associated with the game of football. And we have a very interesting topic today. We have Ray Durbin. Do you remember him? We had him back on Memorial Day, talking about the salutes of the great football players who had military service and their military service. Unfortunately, they passed in their service, and we honored them on that day, Memorial Day, as we should. Today, Ray is going to talk about collections with football, and we'll bring them in right now. Ray Durbin, welcome back to the Pigpen.
Ray Durbin
Well, I'm glad to be back here.
Darin Hayes
Ray, you know, you have a very interesting story that you were sharing with me before we came on and recorded here, and you were telling me a little bit about how you got your passion for row one, which we'll talk about in a little bit what you folks do there, but maybe your childhood memory of a collection you had, how it got you sort of into the sports memorabilia.
Ray Durbin
When I was a kid, a common activity was going out and playing a little baseball during the summer, getting up, and gathering up a bunch of kids to play. And then, if we had a little sandlot game, we would swap baseball cards. And back in the mid-50s, I remember, you know, having Hank Aaron cards, Mickey Mantle cards, Stan Musial, all the, you know, stars at that particular point in time. And also, we'd have some, you know, players who are probably not too noted. One that sticks in my mind because we always used to laugh about it is at the back of a baseball card; they'd have noteworthy achievements from that particular player. And there's a guy, I'm trying to think of his name. It was something like Scooter Malpmus or some name like that, and his nickname was Scooter. And about all they could say about this guy was one day stole a base or somebody or some really mundane achievement they could put down for Scooter. But anyway, we would, you know, try to swap the cards, and maybe 250 Scooter cards would be worth maybe one Wally Moon card. But anyway, that was our common activity. Back then, we would keep all the baseball cards and little cigar boxes. So it wasn't intended that this is something you're going to keep forever, or that we couldn't visualize, you know when you're eight, nine, 10, 11 years old, you don't visualize something like that having tremendous value the way it would now. And I mean, I know for a fact that we had Mickey Mantle cards. And now I think I'm not Mickey Mantle card, the rookie card or early card, you know, selling up in millions of dollars, we would be happy to trade a Mickey Mantle card, you know, for maybe half a popsicle or something. I had
Darin Hayes
similar experiences when I was younger. I was a little bit younger than you, a little bit different decade. I can remember we'd take the football cards, baseball cards, and the teams we don't really like. And in Western Pennsylvania, back then, the Raiders were sort of the big enemy of the Steelers. And I can remember, I think it was like a Phil Villapiano football card. I said I'm going to make my bike sound really cool. I'm going to connect it to the steering mechanism of my bike. So it hits the spokes and sounds like a motorcycle. You know, I'm sure all kids do that. Well, the curse of the Raiders got me because I was driving, driving my bike. I was going all the place with this card in there and ended up taking a couple of spokes out, and my whole tire collapsed. And I went flying over, you know, ass over 10 cups over the handlebars into the street. And I'm like, those doggone Raiders, they got me again, you know?
Ray Durbin
Well, I know back in the early days of Raiders, and that maybe it's continued, they had kind of a reputation of being so much like he sure outlaws, and There was sort of the bane of Western civilization, and it for a while. So I didn't know they also had sabotaged old kids' bicycles.
Darin Hayes
Yeah, he got me good. He got me good.
Ray Durbin
At any rate, the story with baseball cards and little cigar boxes, I had an older brother, I had a younger brother, we all collected baseball cards, everything. And sometime in the early sixties, my mother thought that this was enough, and we hadn't done anything with him for years. So she wound up discarding a lot of these baseball cards. And while I was saying earlier, if I had been able to come up with some legal theory to sue her, I would have. At the time, no one knew these things were going to be, you know, the value they are now. An interesting thing about baseball cards, and you're talking about football cards too, is that we used to collect football cards. And I don't know what it was like when you're collecting, but in the early mid-fifties, on the back of a football card, they would have a diagram of a play. Oh, okay. It might be like they'd have the lineups, and they'd have an offensive scheme and a defensive scheme. We're trying to work through that. You get over there, and you run this way and that way.
Darin Hayes is
running the X's and O's in the backyard. Exactly.
Ray Durbin
that was on the back of the card set. Wow, that's interesting. We always used to focus on the quarterback sneak because that was the easiest concept for us to understand.
Darin Hayes
Yeah, it's just one player in a straight line, right? In A -gaps.
Ray Durbin
But, but anyway, that that's, you know, I think a lot of kids go through that collecting baseball cards, and then it was popular for a while. I know in the late '70s and early '80s, a lot of people were collecting baseball cards again; my son probably taught me to spin and go anywhere to maybe have my retirement savings on baseball cards. But they still didn't have the value that some of these older cards did. The thing about, you know, baseball cards versus tickets, or any kind of sports card versus tickets, those are created with the idea in mind, you're going to collect them, you know, a baseball card, a football card, a basketball card. The idea is that that's something that's collectible, and they're intended, of course, you may get a lousy stick of bubble gum or something with it, but they're actually intended to keep and collect.
Darin Hayes
Ray, I just have a question for you. I know how the bubblegum tasted in the 70s in the baseball cards and football cards. It wasn't very good. Actually, I think maybe the cards tasted better than the gum. How was it back in the late 50s and 60s when you were collecting?
Ray Durbin
I think it was about the same. A lot of times, the bubblegum, of course, back then, the cards just came in a wax paper wrapper. So, a lot of times, bubblegum was pretty stale. And you're right; sometimes, it is hard to tell. They've come in like little squares about the size of a sports card, you know, a piece of bubblegum like that. And they were generally pretty stale.
Darin Hayes
They were consistent on the cards; they got more consistent through the years.
Ray Durbin
control. But anyway, you know, some of the difference between collecting tickets and scorecards and programs versus baseball cards, that sort of thing, or football cards, is the cards are intended to be collectible. When you go back to the 20s and even earlier 1910s, we have a couple of tickets from the 1800s. Wow. Those were not generally intended to be a collectible. They were to get into the game and be admitted to the game, and then people would stuff them in their pockets. They would, you know, get sweaty if it was hot. They would spill cokes on them, get mustard on them, all that kind of stuff. Very few people actually hung onto those. And if they did, they'd be tucked away in a scrapbook someplace. One main difference between collecting tickets and scorecards is that they weren't intended at the time they were created to be collectibles. They were basically intended to get you into the game or the sporting event, and you also have information about the players, the teams, and that sort of thing. So I think that's the main difference between collection and, you know, documentation of a historical event. Now, there are more people collecting tickets, and some of these things, particularly, I know, are sort of counterintuitive. But during the pandemic, a lot of people went back and started even making more of a demand for sports cards because there wasn't that much to do. They're more interested in going back and revisiting their old collection of sports cards. And the same thing with tickets. Tickets people started getting interested in collecting tickets, everything, because they had a lot of time on their hands, and at least there for a while, disposable income. And it was an interesting hobby, something to do. Now, the other thing about tickets, well, it's just like baseball cards. I think a lot of baseball cards or football cards or anything like that are focused on the individual. In other words, you can always go back in and try to collect the New York Yankee personnel, but it's sort of individual player-oriented. You collect Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron, and Al Kaline for the Tigers, and Bill Mazeroski, I think, played on the Pirates. It's sort of oriented toward the individual player. Tickets can be sorted, organized, and rearranged in a lot of different ways. For example, someone might want to focus on their favorite team. For example, if your favorite team is a Pittsburgh Steelers or Pittsburgh Panthers or Penn State or whatever your favorite team is, you can focus on trying to collect for that team. That's one way of doing it. Other people like to collect by conferences and in college, such as Southeastern Conference or Big Ten. Again, getting back to the team thing, if you're talking about college or maybe people focusing on the University of Michigan Wolverines, like the Ohio State Buckeyes, Texas Longhorns, whatever. They can have the team. Normally, on these tickets, you don't focus on an individual player, except you might say, well, Bobby Lane played in this game for the Lions, or Bobby Lane played in this game for the Steelers, or something like that. But a ticket generally doesn't feature a particular player, if that makes any sense. So the tickets, you can focus in on so many different aspects of if you're collecting to collect them. You might try to get your favorite team, as I understand, the Oakland Raiders. Where were they located now? Los Angeles, or where the heck are the Raiders? Las Vegas now. Las Vegas. So, you know, you can focus on the team. You can focus on the vent if you want, Super Bowl. Same in baseball. If you're looking at tickets, you can focus on the World Series. You can focus on all-star games. Focus on a significant event like the game where Hank Aaron hit the broke, tied, no broke Ruth's record. And I remember what that was. It was 515 or whatever his record was. I remember watching that on Publish as I washed my car and told my wife to call me in when he was up and back. So that was, I want to say it was in April 74. So, I mean, when you're looking at tickets or scorecards or anything like that, you can focus on the event, a particular event, a conference, a team, or the World Series Super Bowl. We have a lot of Pro Bowl tickets, some Super Bowl tickets, just a wide variety of items. So, you can narrow it down if you want to. If you're a collector of tickets or scorecards, something like that, you can narrow it down if you want to. We have, in the nature of row one, what we do; we approach it from the standpoint that we want tickets that have some historical significance. We also look at the graphics, the artwork on the ticket, as we were talking about before, you know, if it's something like, admit one, even that can be interesting because even these ticket stubs that are really kind of plain, they'll have the date on it, they'll have the price, they'll have the location, the teams that are playing off, and so even those can be real, interesting from a historical standpoint. So it's all in the eye of the beholder, I guess, what kind of graphics they like or what kind of historical information they have.
Darin Hayes
No, Ray, in the case of collecting ticket stubs or scorecards or the smaller items like that, how do folks display their collection? Is it like in a book? Do they put it up on a wall somehow? What's a common way to?
Ray Durbin
I, you know, I don't display the tickets as such because we enlarge them. But I know for a fact a lot of people will have them. They'll put them in an acrylic or hard plastic container. Other ones will get a little easel and put it on there. For example, if they have a desk in our office or something, I want to put it up. I'll put it in a case of some type and maybe put a little easel. Not too many people are going to hang a little thick it up on a wall, but anything is possible.
Darin Hayes
If they want to hang it, if that ticket means a lot, and they want to hang it on the wall, they can go to row one and buy a big lithograph of it to hang on the wall, right? Exactly.
Ray Durbin
some of our items have blown up. I mean, it's unlimited. It'd be an entire wall, but you know, some of the canvases and everything go up to 60 inches wide by whatever. So they're really pretty striking when you enlarge these tickets. And when you look at them, they have some really, really interesting artwork and graphics. So, you know, we look at it from a lot of different ways, a lot of different perspectives, and we try to have something for everyone. For example, we have a lot of Ohio State and Michigan games because that's a big rivalry. One way you can group these, we're talking about teams, conferences, that sort of stuff. Another way is rivalry games. And so we have a lot of Ohio State, Michigan, as well as just Michigan tickets and Ohio State tickets. We have a lot of Michigan and Ohio State rivalry games. We have, you know, other rivalries, California and Stanford. We have a lot of their tickets where they're playing each other, Oklahoma and Texas. In fact, we acquired one today, which is significant to me. It's the first OU-Texas game I went to in person. It was in 1963. So now they're getting back to why people collect these tickets. A big part of it is that it brings back an emotional experience they've had, a game experience that can relive it. It brings back memories. And I was looking at this ticket, and I remember that particularly because a whole group of us were driving down from Norman to Dallas for that game. And I was telling this story about a roommate who had sold Bibles that previous summer. So he had a gift for Gav. I mean, he was really, and as we're leaving town, we're driving out of Norman, we got pulled over by a policeman. So Joe hopped out of the car and ran up to the policeman. That was before, you know, the Taser you were shooting. He went up to that officer, got a car, ran up to his car so the officer didn't have to move or anything, and got his license for him. And then he wound up thinking, I didn't hear it, but he told us what had happened. He wound up thinking the officer was stopping. He said, you know, I'm a student at OU; I'm going down to the beginning with Texas, and I got a little excited. And I'm really, really happy that you stopped me. If you hadn't stopped me right now, I may have been speeding later on, and I could have heard someone. So, the cop wound up not giving him a ticket. Instead, he also pointed out where the speed traps were between Norman and Dallas. He said, now you want to watch it here; you got to be careful here. So I'm just saying that that's an experience I had. And so I was particularly happy to get that 1963 Texas-OU. So that acquisition
Darin Hayes
You got in 2021, and it takes you to have a memory back, and it was your buddy in the car. That's awesome.
Ray Durbin
And we have another; I have a ticket for the first game I ever went to, the Oklahoma game. I was Oklahoma Clemson. I already had that ticket. So you can go through anyone who is a college graduate or attended college or family, or maybe it's just someone who's always followed a particular team. Obviously, a team like Penn State has a lot of followers who didn't even attend Penn State, such as fans. So all these tickets, you get these old tickets, and they either relate to them because you saw the game on TV or you saw it in person or you attended college, and maybe the first bad hangover you had was the night before or whatever. And so it brings back a lot of memories. It's not nostalgic and all that kind of stuff. With that last comment,
Darin Hayes
you're bringing back a lot of my college days now.
Ray Durbin
I remember a ticket. I'm not going to bore you going over all these with some of my favorite tickets. I have a list and they we've already talked about some of them. We have the it's not actually the Super Bowl, but the first NFL championship game with the FC Green Bay and I think Kansas City Chiefs. We have that ticket. Wow. Have the first championship game. Yes, it's a football league game.
Darin Hayes
OK.
Ray Durbin
I have that one; there are just a lot of Pro Bowl games and different pro tickets.
Darin Hayes
What's the oldest ticket stub that you have in your collection?
Ray Durbin
uh, we have an 1876. It's actually a program, uh, but it looks sure I could take it that it's a program uh with Harvard and Yale, and what's interesting about that particular game, uh, I'm trying to think Harvard was undefeated, of course, yeah it was their second meeting a couple of things because I had talked about this before um 1876 teddy roosevelt was an uh freshman at Harvard so he was attending the game there's a guy by the name of Walter camp he uh was on uh yale and if I've told you this story before I really apologize
Darin Hayes
No, you, well, you did. We talked about this before, because I saw that one. And I knew the significance of the game, you know, making football history. And that was I purchased that cup that has that on there. I drink out of that, you know, a couple of times a week. So I love that one. That's a great one.
Ray Durbin
And, you know, the story is that Walter Camp was a freshman on the Yale team and the captain of the Harvard team; I think I have this story, right? Saw this guy only weighed 150 pounds. He said, you're not going to let him play, are you? He looks like a baby. He'll get hurt. I always liked that story because, you know, he went on to be instrumental in developing American football rules and everything. But some of the other tips you asked about are the oldest ones, a ticket, and a couple of really cool ones. One is an 1893 pin versus Princeton. Wow. University of Pennsylvania versus Princeton. That's a really good ticket. Those are kind of ornate. They're really fancy and elaborate things. Another early ticket that I like a lot, one of my favorites, is an 1896 Cincinnati versus Carlisle Indians. Oh, my goodness. Carlisle school, you know. And I think some of the language is really funny. It's like, you know, see Wild West Indians; they're really playing it up, and the graphics are pretty good there. Then, some of the earlier tickets are from 1907, Princeton, Yale, 1909, you know, Harvard, 1910, Dartmouth versus Harvard. Those were big.
Darin Hayes
games in that era. Those are organic games in the season.
Ray Durbin
And a lot of times, the teams would be undefeated or one way and go on and claim the national championship.
Darin Hayes
That's your Ohio State, Michigan and your LSU, Alabama games of this era. That's Yale, Harvard.
Ray Durbin
Exactly. There is Nate, a really pretty ticket. I'd like a ticket if it's. Yeah, I have it here. It's a 1923 Navy Penn State ticket. I like all these old tickets because you look at them and they have football and two different words. So it says, you know, see Navy Penn State College football. They have F -O -T -T in the space B -A -L -L. And a lot of the old tickets have it, you know, two separate words. But I like that ticket because it's just an attractive ticket and they have a little football shape on it and they show an actual photo of some action, you know, from 1922 or thereabout.
Darin Hayes
Before we go any further on your description, maybe the listeners can see the photos of these tickets because you have them in your artwork on row one. Maybe you could tell us where to look so maybe they could go to there while they're listening to this. Yeah.
Ray Durbin
that would be great. In fact, I have about two tablets and a cell phone here, too. They just want to look up and type in row one brand, all one word, row one brand.
Darin Hayes
W -O -N -E brand.
Ray Durbin
right .com, and they'll be able to pull that website up, and then as you scroll down, you'll come to a place where it says to go to the gallery, and there are currently about 6100 items on there of images, so they're not all tickets a large number tickets, but there's also scorecards and remixed artwork things like that, but that's a good way to do it, and also if you have a favorite team like Notre Dame or Penn State or Alabama or whatever up at the top of that when you go to a pictorum you should get on the pictorum gallery when you go to that there's a search box up top, and you just type in your favorite team it should pull up depending on the team it might pull up I just checked earlier baseball pulled up about 12 pages of different artwork on that I go to a team like Michigan or Notre Dame you'll pull up a lot of artwork old tickets and
Darin Hayes
Uh, and let me just give the listeners a real quick tip. If you happen to be on the Pigskin Dispatch site, we have an ad on the front page for row one; you can click on that. It takes you to the sports history network link. Also, if you're on sports history, network .com, click on the row. One link, it'll take you through there. And when in the pictorium gallery, uh, that Ray is talking about, uh, he's offered a special code for a sports history network listeners, she 15, get a 15% discount in the pictorial gallery. So, uh, take note of that and take advantage of it.
Ray Durbin
Yeah, that's a great point. That's a really good point. So, you know, there's just a lot of football tickets. We're talking about rivalries, Army Navy, and those are really interesting. We talked about Ohio State, Michigan, Southern California, Stanford, Alabama, Auburn, Oklahoma, Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and just any college rivalry you can think of. Plug it in, and see what you come up with. You might just have to go to one team or the other. Like, if you go to Army, you're going to pick up all the Army Navy tickets. You can try it now, and you can try the Army and Navy, too. But it's just fantastic artwork, in my opinion. And when you blow this stuff up, it makes really a unique piece of art. It's a historical, significant, interesting conversation piece.
Darin Hayes
It's so neat what you do on row one. You show different views of the ticket, but one of the images that you can click on of that ticket is to show it what it looks like hanging on your wall, and that's really cool. It really brings it to life, and before you buy it, it shows you, hey, that would look great in my living room or my den or something. That's a great feature that you have, too, so make sure you folks out there take advantage of that, too.
Ray Durbin
Yeah, I appreciate it. I'm pictorial, too. I'm, I'm glad you brought that. The other thing about that is that you can get these in various mediums, like, uh, you can get them printed on wood, which looks good. Uh, uh, metal signs. If, if you're, you know, have a game room or something and your crowd control, it's not quite up to par. You might want to get a metal sign. I'm kidding. Uh, so you don't have the cameras destroyed or anything, but there are all sorts of me a good medium chair, acrylic, wood, uh, canvas, paper, prints, it can be framed by us, all that kind of stuff. Do they? I would just end by saying we have a lot of different sports, uh, baseball, basketball, football, soccer, boxing, race car, any 500 tickets, Kentucky Derby tickets. There's a wide variety of sports. And we're, we're adding things daily. We're getting there, but we have a lot more items to add to the website.
Darin Hayes
Now, you mentioned a little bit earlier that during Covid and during the pandemic, there seemed to be a lot more people that started collecting again, you know, maybe having that extra time and they're scouring through the internet and say, hey, you know, I used to collect baseball cards or ticket stuff when I was younger. Now, did it drive the prices up for collectors because of the supply and demand type of thing, or did it help the collector?
Ray Durbin
You know, I can't answer that. I would suspect it would. But I've heard that in terms of the baseball tickets or baseball cards. I have come up a little bit. And my understanding is the same with the football tickets and programs and everything. A lot of our acquisitions were done prior to a couple of years ago. So.
Darin Hayes
OK.
Ray Durbin
uh you know at this point in time we're in the stage where hey if we see something unique uh that we're interested in and from a selfish standpoint you know we're talking about that 53 not 53 63 uh texas oklahoma ticket had a special emotional appeal to me uh so yeah we're in a daily basis but uh there for a while i mean you know it's just like uh had a special mail truck delivery where we're getting a lot of items in a couple years ago so i think the prices have gone up again we i'm i'm in a mode uh row one is in the mode and we're acquiring this we're not trying to resell them at this point in time uh different people have different approaches some people will buy something and then try to turn it sell it turn it whatever you want language i use we acquire the items from the standpoint of the uh how we think people will react to it from an emotional standpoint an artistic standpoint it's an interesting historical event but we're looking at from the from the standpoint of the image how how good a work of art will that make uh and the other thing we hadn't talked about we we also put these on other products uh i mean they're they look great on uh t -shirts and mugs uh shower curtains towels i i think one of the best items is is a beach towel or even a bath towel because uh uh the shape of a towel is almost like a a ticket
Darin Hayes
Right. I didn't even think of that.
Ray Durbin
and curtains and always just make really, really good designs if you're a sports fan or sports fanatic. Or if you like to take showers or baths.
Darin Hayes
Get it back. But we hope that our listeners like that. So
Ray Durbin
But there are a lot of good products out there, and they're interesting. I just like them from an aesthetic and a historical standpoint.
Darin Hayes
Okay, now, aside from I know you told us a feeling about the 63 OU Texas stub that you have of all your collection of program covers and ticket stubs. Let's just take that one, that latest acquisition, out of the mix here. What is your personal favorite, and maybe tell us why?
Ray Durbin
Well, it's tough. I guess. That's like telling you which was your fault.
Darin Hayes
favorite child, right? Exactly.
Ray Durbin
Exactly. I guess just from a, I fluctuate, here's another again, another thing, I look at these, and if I haven't looked at a particular ticket in a while, I'm like, wow, I always like that. You go to the head of the class. But I guess right now, while you're asking me, I think the ticket I really like is that 1896 Cincinnati Carlisle Indian ticket. It's so unique. The other ticket, from a personal selfish standpoint, is a good 1969 University of Michigan, Missouri ticket. And it's real free graphics. It shows the stadium, and I think, uh, uh, pennants with, uh, I believe, uh, Michigan, Missouri are on it. And, uh, Michigan needs that same theme for the home game. Show it the whole, whole year. They also have a ticket like that, a 69 Ohio State, Michigan ticket. But I liked the Missouri, Michigan ticket because a good friend of mine and his date, as well as my wife and I, went to that game, the Michigan, Missouri game. It was a beautiful day, a fall day, real nice weather. Uh, and we scrunched up in Ann Arbor's, you know, stadium. Uh, so I always remember that game, like it just happened, uh, yesterday, uh, another game. It's not all that aesthetic, but it's one of these tickets that has a lot of value. Uh, and it is a unique 1969 Texas OU ticket. That means a lot to me because this same friend of mine that we went to that game, you know, with Chris, my wife, and his date, uh, a few weeks later, he was getting ready to go into the Navy. I was going to be going into the Army at the end of October, and we decided on a lark. I think it will probably be a Wednesday or so. We found out that my older brother had a couple of tickets to the OU-Texas game. So we drove down from Detroit to Norman, picked up the tickets, and then headed back out, and then drove back. How old is that?
Darin Hayes
That's going to be quite a.
Ray Durbin
Oh, let me see. It's, well, we broke it up. We, uh, we drove straight through from Detroit to Norman. And at that time, I'm going to guess just about 21 hours a day, or, and then, it's about another six hours that I'll bet. It was, uh, it was a hike, but, uh, it was fun. It's well worth it. So those two tickets have a lot of meaning to me. Um, I guess that's not it. And my favorite, favorite tickets. I mean, there's a lot, though. Every time you look at it, really.
Darin Hayes
Right. Well, Ray, I appreciate you coming on today and sharing your collection and your passion with us. And again, folks, we have the row one links in our show notes. You can also find them on sports history, network .com, and pigskindispatch.com. Make sure you check out Ray's collection on row one and share that art with us. And I can hang it on your wall, drink your coffee out of it, and dry it off when you get out of the shower with it. There are many things you can do: put it on your car keys. So make sure you check those out. And, Ray, once again, thank you very much for joining us and telling us about this great collection.
Ray Durbin
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
