As Bar Codes Replace Tickets, Something Is Lost Before the First Pitch

I have tickets from all the concerts and plays I've gone to since 1967. Great memories otherwise forgotten. Maybe that's why I still don't own a cellphone let alone a smartphone. I wouldn't give two cents for something off someone's printer. I always ask for the nicest half of my stusbs. But it's the same with the loss of great vinyl album covers. Download songs? But what about those great covers and liner notes? Gone...

If the ticket printouts were more artistic, would they qualify as souvenirs? Perhaps a print out image of the old style ticket for a color printer? This would satisfy both the seller and buyer.

I have tickets from trips on historic steam trains in the UK, USA, and Australia. Can you imagine steam railroads issuing e-tickets?

It's depressing to see people use their own phones, printers, ink and paper and then have to scan the barcode at the venue themselves. Why are we doing other people's jobs?

Thank you for writing this article as I look at a printed out ticket from Jordan Zimmerman's no-hitter last year. Not exactly suited for framing.

I tried the smartphone option recently at my local minor league ballpark... but the scanner "lost it in the sun" and it took something like 20 tries to read it! So it was back to the "older" method of printing tickets at home. They do look somewhat like the "real" tickets (though half the page is occupied by an advertisement), but I doubt that my home printers' ink will last very long.

On the other hand, I wonder for how long a physical memento will have meaning after the original owner has left this mortal coil. There are things from my grandfather and his other children in my parents' house that I simply don't understand. Will my children care about my nearly complete collection of autographs in this year's yearbook of my local minor league team? Will my grandchildren? It's hard to say.

Baseball seems to be the official pastime of people who enjoy raging against technology, modernity, and change.

I have hundreds of stubs from a variety of events. I often wrote on the back the results of the game and who I was with. Just another brick in the wall.

Words:260 In today’s article, As Bar Codes Replace Tickets, Something is Lost Before the First Pitch. Author Seth Berkman states how for decades, baseball fans have been buying their tickets and have the stubs torn off at the stadium. Fans liked to have a souvenier. Now, people can print their tickets online instead of buying traditional cardstock ones. It’s just not the same. The article stated how “a company in Massachusetts called That’s My Ticket sell customized reproductions of tickets with the option to add newspaper clips, photo or printed statistics from the game on a framed layout.” Chris Heston (a major league pitcher for the San Francisco Giants) once threw a no hitter at Citi Field and wanted to remember it. Luckily, his family members had the traditional ticket and gave it to him. Yes, it may be easier to print out your ticket from your computer, but what if something that could make history happens during the game and all you have is a printed bar code. Sure, you can use That’s My Ticket, but it isn’t the same as having a real ticket. I enjoyed this article because I agree that printing your ticket isn’t as memorable as holding a traditional cardstock one. What if you’re like Mets fan, Terrance Richards who printed out his tickets and when he went to go show them at the stadium, the bar code wasn’t dark enough because his printer was low on ink toner. In conclusion, I prefer the original/classic cardstock tickets because it’s like buying a piece of history.

In February a ticket stub to the first game of the first World Series (in Boston, Oct. `1903) sold at auction for over $40,000. The stub was in very worn condition but there are only two or three confirmed examples of Game 1 tickets in existence.

I have my Indiana Pacers at New York Nets Game 6 1972 ABA Championship at Nassau Coliseum on May 20, 1972 ticket!

I always try to get actually tickets on cardstock instead of a computer-printed PDF with a barcode whenever I can. I collect tickets of games and events (Broadway shows, etc.) I have been to and the traditional tickets are a much better souvenir and provide a much better memory.

That said, barcodes allow tickets to be shared (and sold) up until the last minute and I appreciate that. But actual paper tickets on cardstock are still the best!

I still do my best to get a real ticket but that isn't always available. The best ticket stub that I have is from Patti Smith and her Band at the Bilbao Guggenheim. It is fairly large and has beautifully engraved background. I still long for postage stamps made the same way. The flat surfaces of today are truly boring & not all that exciting.

No thanks on the nostalgia. Electronics for me. I love my Kindle, I love reading newspapers on line, I love not messing with box offices and lines for tix to theater, opera, etc. My husband doesn't have to spell out his one-syllable Anglo name to someone in a booth whose typical response is "whaaa..."

I like using the smartphone barcode. It's stressful having to find the tickets, make sure I'm carrying the tickets, fumbling for the tickets - which pocket was it? And nostalgia is far overrated.

As part of a trip to Boston,I took my son to a Red Sox games a few years ago and foolishly risked buying printed tickets from a scalper. Having never seen printed tickets at the time, I asked how I knew these were any good. "Oh just come back and find me if they aren't."

Isn't anything sacred any more?

As a long time SD Padres season ticket holder I have seen the quality of the real game ticket drop to an all time low. This year's small size tickets are so bad it is difficult to read the visiting team's tiny printed logo.
Gone are the days of the classic big ticket printed on a quality heavy paper stock.
As a 9 year old kid, I remember walking up to my first PCL game at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles to see the LA Angels play the Hollywood Stars and being thrilled to hand my ticket to the usher as I heard the sounds of the vendors hawking scorecards and pencils. Score cards, big tickets, and organ music are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Too bad.

Somewhere I still have my father' letter and order form for the Philadelphia Phillies 1964 World Series games. My father mailed the order to the attention of the Phillies ticket office at Connie Mack Stadium. I was ten years old at the time. Alas, the Phillies with a 61/2 game lead collapsed and lost ten games in a row with only 12 games left to the season. However the Philles returned the letter and postal order. The trauma is till with me. Digital images can not replace the feel of aged paper tickets and letter.

I love tickets: the colors and layout, the dates, the seat numbers, all in a small space you can hold and look at in anticipation, and later in recollection. There’s a reality to them, a sense of uniqueness and ownership of the moment, that digital printouts don’t give me. But 10 years from now, when retinal scans or some such technology will be used to gain entrance, I expect to be reading a similar article about printouts. So collectors, keep those PDFs. Nostalgia will always be there, even if the pace is quickening.

I still have the torn stub from David Wells' perfect game. I don't know if it has monetary value but I've kept it. What I'll always remember is it was Beanie Baby Day and people (obviously there only for the toy) were leaving entering the top of the 9th, oblivious to the historic nature of the event.

I have a bunch of old tickets too (plays, concerts, ballgames). My plan is to arrange (and attach) them on a wall of my retirement home, paint over them with a clear stain, admire them as wallpaper, and reminisce.

I still have my ticket stub from seeing the Beatles in 1964. Have also managed to hold onto stubs from seeing the Yardbirds, Hendrix, Springsteen, Cream, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin and Big Brother and many others. I'm always trying to buy paper tickets at box offices. A real hassle but I love being able to keep the stubs.

Have a lot of stubs from Dodger Games too, including a game v. the Giants when there was a triple play...

I admit tickets you printed yourself on a letter-sized sheet of 20-lb paper doesn't have the same feel-in-hand as small rectangles of card stock. But they do frame fine. My ticket to Game 1 of the 2010 World Series is framed. On the other hand, I had StubHub printout problems for a game last year, so I had to go to Ticket Services for a freshly-printed card-stock ticket. I was grumpy about it until about the seventh inning when I realized Tim Lincecum was no-hitting the Padres again. You can make mementos out of a lot of things.

Yet another example of too much stuff. Obviously, many of us have far more space than we need, so we fill it up with memorabilia that our children will have to dispose of. Yes, my kids will be appalled at the amount of stuff they'll have to go through, but at least it doesn't include used ticket stubs!

The last sentence is not a hypothetical.
“I want anything I can possibly print for convenience unless I’m driving to see Jeter for his final game.”

I drove about 700 miles (round trip) for Mariano Rivera's last game, risking that he would pitch in their last home date (with the Rays). The tickets were purchased months ahead of time, on the chance that the Yanks would be out of the race and Rivera would pitch in any circumstance and the weather would cooperate.

I have a wonderful memory of the cheers and the tears - the most rewarding sporting event I've ever attended. With so much scripted and expected, the walk to the mound by Jeter and Pettitte to summon the bullpen to take Mariano out was a memorable surprise touch of overwhelming emotion - for the fans and for Rivera whose legendary stoicism melted into bittersweet human vulnerability.

Sadly, I have only a large paper barcoded piece of paper as a tangible souvenir.

My two nephews went to Jeter's last home game. And one of them also went to Boston for his final major league appearance. Photos, a cap, great memories - but no ticket.

'As Bar Codes Replace Tickets, Something Is Lost Before the First Pitch'

Yeah, getting in by slipping the usher a fin -- nothing for him to take, nothing to hide the bill behind.

I usually opt for the printer tickets, but this year, for my son's 16th birthday, our Yankee tickets came in the mail. The printer tickets can't compare!

It's a shame today that many of us can't even afford to buy a 'barcode' to see a game or attend an event.

It isn't just tickets. There's nothing like the value of holding a copy of The New York Times with your letter or Op-Ed article printed in it. No amount of recommendations or editor's highlights of an online comment--not even this one--can match the sheer weight of a newspaper in your hand. It's as if it didn't really happen until you have it in writing.

Not being rich and liking to see baseball in person, I welcome the chance to shop online at the last minute for seriously discounted tickets on the second hand market and print them out. So I do not miss the old tickets. (It's not my fault the teams overprice tickets so they go to the secondary market or worse. The empty seats behind home plate for nearly every Yankee game are a shame.)

I have a scorebook in which I keep score at games I attend. Also some one-game scorecards from before they got expensive and I got cheap. Luckily I have the one from the Righetti no-hitter as I mentioned in a reply below. Those are my souvenirs.

I was lucky to be taught to keep score by a dear friend of my parents who also was our host for a game each year at the corporate box his company had at Crosley Field. (Back then company boxes were a group of seats in a good location at field level.) Harry noticed me looking over his shoulder while he kept score, and took to explaining the lingo as the game went on.

It is too bad about the demise of ticket stubs. As a boy I saved many of the ticket stubs from games I attended. I now have a displayed collection that includes the Mets fifth game World Series victory against the Orioles in 1969, all three Mets Championship Series tickets against the Reds in 1973; the Mets first World Series game against the Red Sox in 1986; the 1998 NBA All Star Game at Madison Square Garden; and numerous other World Series; Jets; Knicks, Nets, and Giants games. They make for sweet memories - along with the scorecards - and great conversation pieces.

This article is about a decade late. And not only sports, I used home printed tix to go to the opera last week.

My husband has kept all the tickets from the concerts, stage plays and ballgames that he has ever attended. Now, our 17-year-old is doing the same. Every now and then they pull out a favorite and reminisce or burst into song or go to youtube and search for videos of the televised game or concert that they've been to. It's a silly but fun father-son thing that they do. I love it.

I recently found our ticket stubs to a 1981 Rolling Stones concert ($16.25 each). It really wasn't the same carrying a bar code sheet into last Sat. evening's Kansas City Stones extravaganza. "Tickets" that night were $168 each and I have to say those guys rocked harder and better than ever before. I kept our bar code sheets.

I've held onto movie tickets for decades. They used to be printed on fairly heavy paper, and these age well. In recent years, theaters have been printing tickets on thermal paper: cheap, flimsy, and infused with toxic chemicals. I don't even want to touch them.

We have a bulletin board in our home that is covered with forty years of ticket stubs, every thing from ballgames to concerts and museums. It never fails to interest visitors but sadly we post fewer and fewer tickets to it each year. It is a history of our life together, a sort of diary of our interests. A printout from our computer may be a record but for the pure feel of a ticket stub it will never cut it.

"Big Book of Tickets"
The title I scrawled on the photo album where I started shoving my ticket stubs in 1983 after my first concert. The pages are filled, and stubs fall out all the time, but I am still adding to it with every event I attend.
It was a sad day the first time a whole ticket came back home with me. No stub. A whole ticket. As though I hadn't even gone to the show!
I have never purchased an "e" ticket to anything, ever.
THAT day - the day a real ticket is no longer an option - will really bum me out.

Not to be a grumpy old fan but the entire nostalgia industry seems ridiculous. Old time junk is still old time junk. Paying outrageous prices for memorabilia like torn ticket stubs? How foolish can we get?

In my basement I have a box which contains ripped (how else could they possibly be?) ticket stubs from the '70s from NY Ranger games ($12 for sixth-row seats. Remember when red seats were affordable to simple people like us, NYers?), Met games at Shea, and Jet games at Shea, too.

This new ticketing style has also affected concerts, and I saved my stubs from Central Park shows ($5 for the best seats, $3 for the others) and other local arenas.

It's just weird these days when I go to any event at MSG and they beep me in with their scanner hovering over my letter-sized computer printout.

Bring back real tickets!!!!!

The last time I was at Yankee Stadium was in 1993 and was lucky to see Jim Abbott pitch a no-hitter against Cleveland. On the way out I bought a scorecard. One day I will find out where JimAbbott is and ask him to autograph it. But the ticket stubs for back then are gone.

I go for the Real Paper ticket every time--Movies, Plays, Hockey games, even waiting in line at the Deli. I keep the best ones in a little box.

Buy a program and keep score and save that. I'd much rather have a properly scored card from Santana's no hitter than a hard ticket. Keeping score unites you with the most avid fans out there. Collecting hard tickets to sell some day on Amazon is hardly a vestige of the past.

By the same token, modern technology has made possible the exquisite entry tickets many of us get when visiting museums and historic sites abroad.

Prior to entering the stadium, a fan can trade their printout tickets for the real deal at Citi Field in the ticket office. It just takes a little time.

Yet more business school geniuses that look to squeeze the last dime out of everything they touch while having no concept of value.

Thanks for this story. Just last month I decided to have the Wash Nats send me my tickets in the mail because I wanted a real ticket stub again. I did get a ticket but it was just a generic boring one. I do think there has been something lost.