Sunday, February 1, 2009

Is buying a Super Bowl ticket a good investment?



It’s only a few hours until Super Bowl XLIII between the Arizona Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Steelers. How much would you pay to go to the game? According to several ticket purchase sites, tickets are still available at prices ranging from several hundred dollars to several thousand dollars – one site lists a private suite with seating for eight if you are willing to pay upwards of $74,000.

Suppose you were able to get your hands on one of those tickets. Would it be worth paying the big bucks – could you ever recover the cost by turning that ticket into a collectible?

The answer may be yes, even if you don’t attend the game.
That’s because there are collectors out there who are willing to pay big money for tickets in perfect condition with the stub attached. It can be a ticket that wasn’t used at all, or a ticket for a VIP who managed to bypass security.

In any case, to turn that ticket into a valuable collectible, you will need to preserve the ticket and have it authenticated. And patience is advised – according to the Los Angeles Times, a well-preserved ticket to the 1968 Super Bowl was sold for $19,922 more than 30 years after the game was played.

One major player in this business is Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA), whose services include grading and certification of not only tickets but also all kinds of sports memorabilia such as autographs, equipment, cards and commemorative coins. Once the ticket is authenticated and graded, you can find potential buyers by visiting SuperbowlTicketCollector.com, where you can buy tickets from every Super Bowl game, including tickets autographed by the game MVPs.

Football not your thing? Visit Gradedtickets.com for souvenirs from other signature sporting events such as baseball all-star games, the Indy 500 and the Kentucky Derby.

As with any potential collectible, there is no guarantee of its value. One person’s trash be another person’s treasure, but on the other hand, it may be another person’s, well, trash. Take the case of the infamous Purple Tickets to President Obama’s inauguration. Several of them are listed for sale on ebay. Some have no bids at all, but one right now is going for over $100. What is the difference between the ones with bids and the ones that don’t? It’s not clear.

The only way to guarantee a long-run payoff is to invest in preserving your own memories. So remember, if you’ve got a Purple Inauguration ticket and you don’t want to sell it, at Purple Raincoat we’re offering you the opportunity to preserve that ticket as your own collectible as a special price. Time is running out on our special offer, so check it out and give us a call.

In the meantime, enjoy the game – or, as Seth Meyers said on Saturday Night Live last night, enjoy “Bruce Springsteen’s warm-up act.”

Super Bowl Logo source: http://graphicdesignandme.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/super_bowl_2009_logo.jpg