3000 Strikeout Tickets populations and grading
 

Just wondering how many 3k Strikeout Ticket collectors are out there and if anyone can add to what I have below about this collection.

I recently picked up one of the 1982-05-25 - Fergie Jenkins 3000 Strikeout tickets. The previous owner tells me he had 4 full tickets. I was surprised to see one of them sell for only $110 on ebay, since I am unaware of any others being out there. I am also surprised that there is not more interest in the 3000 Strikeout set, since it is an achievable collection (with the exception of Walter Johnson) and some really great players in the list.

I am using PSA's weighting as simply a reference. I know these weights were given a long time ago, but should be updated/adjusted to reflect the true difficulty of finding each. (https://www.psacard.com/psasetregist...mposition/5272)
1923-07-22 - Walter Johnson (Weight = 10): Ok, I accept this. Hopefully one will eventually show up.
1974-07-17 - Bob Gibson (7): I have seen at least a 1/2 dozen stubs, no fulls. So I can accept a 7. Also, surprised none have been graded.
1978-10-01 - Gaylord Perry (3): I know there are a bunch of low grade stubs and 2 graded (4, 1.5). There is also a Full - Punch/Canceled - Autographed. My guess the total number is 10 to 20 out there, so a weight of 3????? If you are the one with the full, can you post it?
1980-07-04 - Nolan Ryan (6): I myself have had 6 of these stubs, but have never heard of a full. 8 have been graded, with 2 being graded as a 5. My guess, probably 20 to 25 exist.
1981-04-18 - Tom Seaver (4): I have seen several low grade tickets (maybe 8), with the highest graded being a grade of 2.
1981-04-29 - Steve Carlton (2): I have seen several stubs, 5 of which are graded. I have 3 of the 4 graded full tickets. Not the hardest ticket, but a weight of 2?
1982-05-25 - Fergie Jenkins (3): 4 Full recently became available, I am not aware of any others, so a weight of 3?
1983-06-24 - Don Sutton (3): The only 2 I know of, are the 2 I have, so again a weight of 3?
1984-07-04 - Phil Niekro (3): There are 2 graded, one full and one stub. I have seen a couple others out there, but again a weight of 3?
1986-08-01 - Bert Blyleven (2): There are 3 graded, yet a weight of 2.
1998-07-05 - Roger Clemens (3): I can find a Clemens on ebay just about anytime, but this is weighted higher than Blyleven and the same as, Perry, Jenkins, Sutton and Niekro.

If anyone has a nice Gibson, Seaver, Niekro and/or Blyleven to trade (See my tickets: https://www.gladishsolutions.com/ticketstubs/) or sell, let me know.

Gdoggy,
FYI, I do own a full, unused ticket to Nolan Ryan's 3,000th K.
I'm an advanced Nolan Ryan collector and have collected tickets to all of Nolan's 807 regular season pitching appearances.

BTW, I do not PSA grade my tickets, but mine is in great shape.
Here you go!

Here are my items from Fergie Jenkins' 3,000th K game:

The ticket stub, sitting behind the Cubs' dugout

https://oi60.photobucket.com/albums/...psxbgomejx.jpg

How ironic and fitting that Garry Templeton was on the cover of the program for the game, as he was Fergie's 3,000th K victim (I got Fergie's autograph on it after the game):

https://oi60.photobucket.com/albums/...psfkieyyhb.jpg

And the scoresheet I kept during the game:

https://oi60.photobucket.com/albums/...psg111qrpf.jpg

Steve

Great stuff Steve, thanks for posting.

There were 14,261 people in attendance at the game, and while I understand that most people don't collect stubs, I'm sure that there are considerably more out there than you seem to think there are.

You are using the people who get paid for their opinions as your judge for how many tickets are out there, which I suggest is not the best way to count. Although, in their defense (really, am I about to defend the opinion sellers?) they might be using the attendance figures to help determine their "weights".

Many of us have zero interest in what the opinion sellers think, and all of us have stuff in our collections that isn't accounted for in their "pop reports".

If somebody were to purchase the "highest graded example" of the Ryan 3000th K ticket, and probably pay big bucks for it, they would be pretty bummed if Scott decided to then sell his collection and cause probably every Nolan pop report to crash to the ground, not just that one.

Doug "but I could certainly be wrong" Goodman

Doug “he’s spot on” Goodman

I don't collect 3K strikeout games, although it would be interesting. But if I were ever to start thinking about it, I'd probably go the easy route and collect 5k strikeout games instead. That should be a pretty easy set to complete. :p

I've got an extra season ticket stub to Nolan's 5,000thK game with your name written all over it if you ever decide to go there. ;):)

I get a kick out of reading PSA's population reports and Ticket Set Registries. Like Doug said I know several collectors who could blow those numbers out of the water if they cared to get their tickets graded.

As to the original post, I actually owned a Walter Johnson 3000th K stub from a season ticket book. It was graded a 4. I don't own many graded stubs but I purchased it this way. Ironically I got it cheap because the owner and PSA weren't aware that it was his 3000th K stub! Anyway its gone now. I consigned to an auction and they lost it! Along with my Roger Clemens debut stub. We settled on a price but I wasn't really happy with it. At the time I needed to get cash so I didn't haggle too much. If anyone sees this stub let me know how you got it. They thought it went into the trash somehow. Also there is a bit of a descrepancy on the actual date of his 3000th K. The consensus is July 22nd but there are two other dates around then that get tossed around.

As for the other tickets, the Blyleven is very tough. I owned a stub but sold it. I have not seen another. The Gibson I own a stub. Its pretty tough to find. I also sold the sister seat to it. The Sutton is tough and the Niekro is real tough. For the modern ones the Sabathia isn't so easy as Arizona has a limited season ticket base.

I would list the toughest tickets as:

1: Walter Johnson
2: Bert Blyleven
3: Phil Niekro
4: Bob Gibson
5: Fergie Jenkins

2-3-4 could probably go any order.

If my name is written on it, it must be pretty cheap. :p

I almost had ticket stubs to Ryan's 300th win. Early in the 1990 season I plotted out when he might be going for number 300 and bought tickets for myself and a friend for 2 games at Arlington. Luckily, the first game happened to be his first shot at 300. So we drove the 3-1/2 hours to see the nightgame on a work day. Unfortunately it was against my favorite team, the Yankees. For the first and only time in my life I was rooting against the Yankees. But, they roughed Ryan up pretty good and he left the game in the 8th inning down by 4. "Well, at least the Yankees are going to win", I thought. No. The Rangers scored 1 in the 8th and 3 in the 9th to tie it. The Rangers eventually won in the 11th. No Ryan 300 win and no Yankees victory. Not my favorite baseball memory.

Then Ryan got #300 in Milwaukee so we had to decide whether we wanted to drive back up to Arlington for his next start. We did hoping to see his 301st win. But, he lost to Toronto. It's funny because I remember him being hit really hard by Toronto but in looking at Baseball Reference, it wasn't nearly as bad as I remember. I guess my jaundiced view has clouded my memory.

Thanks for the picture of the Walter. I have never seen it before.

I like you list above - I am short the Walter, Fergie, Sutton, and Blyleven. I have had theses guys in my saved eBay searches for a couple of years now and have never come across these.

Also around the grading...

My set is a mix of graded and non-graded (for what’s it worth mine is #4 on the registry).

PSA used to run pretty nice specials on ticket grading, and I would send them in when I had 10 or so and the price is right. Now the special won’t go below $20 with an incredible long wait. Pass for me.

That being said, I like having my tickets in slabs because it shows the event on the label instead of me writing the event on a white label on a top loader. Plus, though I don’t care about competing in registry position, it is nice to have my stuff scanned and accessible in the PSA app.

Story on my Perry ticket: I bought this when it first came up for auction at a healthy price, and the seller kept selling one low grade Perry ticket after another. I ended up getting two, but I think there were 10 or so sold from the same seller.

I thought you started the post because you got the Fergie!

Nope I am not the OP, but hopefully this is a sign of me finding one soon!

This thread alerted me to the fact that of the 19 3,000 strikeout pitchers, WaJo is the only one not still alive. I can remember always taking note when he would drop down another notch on the list as he was passed by another pitcher, but that hasn't happened for almost 20 years. Interesting trivia, but it also does make something of a statement about trends in pitching and hitting over the years. I remember reading a long time ago that if batters of his era struck out at the rate of those in Nolan Ryan's era, Walter would have ended up with somewhere around 7,000 strikeouts. I'm sure SABR guys could come up with ameliorating factors that would have adjusted that fantasy total downward, but the 3,000 strikeout list and the dates of their achievements does contain some interesting clues as to changes in the style of play over the years.

Absolutely, Hank!
Hitters back in WaJo's era mostly attempted to meet & square up the ball and hit to all fields.
Today, every hitter uppercuts in an attempt to elevate the ball and hit the HR, even though striking out is occurring at a ridiculous rate.

Yep, the Babe changed everything. As the saying went when we were kids: "Singles hitters drive Fords, home run hitters drive Cadillacs." Now they all drive Lamborghinis!

Randall- I was skeptical about the dating of the Walter Johnson 3k ticket. I have seen many times people go to Baseball-Reference and count the home games played and list that as the ticket date, and Baseball-Reference shows Jul 22 was the 57th home game played by Cleveland: https://www.baseball-reference.com/t...e-scores.shtml. I figured that the 57th home game played wound not be the 57 scheduled, due to rain-outs. According to Retrosheet, where Baseball-Reference gets its data (https://www.retrosheet.org/schedule/index.html), it shows 5 games were postponed due to rain/cold.
They were:
5/09 vs. NYA Cold, Played: 7/14
5/11 vs. NYA Rain, Played: 7/16
5/12 vs. WS1 Rain, Played: 7/20
5/21 vs. BOS Cold, Played: 7/07
6/28 vs. CHA Rain, Played: 6/30
Amazingly all 5 postponed games were made up before 7/22, so yeah, that is the correct date. So it is possible to have a complete 3k Strikeout collection, which is not possible with 3k Hit or 300 Win.

As for your toughest 5, I would replace Gibson with Sutton. There are at least a 1/2 dozen stubs out there, usually going for avg $250. Last one that came up on ebay was something like 6 months ago, but went for significantly more (can't remember the exact number).

Thanks Scott for sharing your Full Ryan. I figured there had to be at least one out there, which is one of the reasons why I stated this thread.

Thanks Steve for sharing your Jenkins 3k collection, very nice!!!

Does anyone have a near complete set? I am missing: Walter Johnson (obviously), Bob Gibson, Tom Seaver, Phil Niekro and Bert Blyleven.

Would love to see more of the more difficult 3000 Strikeout tickets posted.

Here is Gibson, Fergie, Niekro & Perry. The Perry is signed by Fergie. I have seen several of these and believe that someone had several unused tickets of Fergie and Perry's 3000th and handed the wrong ones to the wrong guy to sign. I have actually owned two of these signed by Fergie.

3000th Strikeout tickets
 

Thanks Randall for sharing, especially the Niekro, I have never seen one before. Did you get the Fergie from the gentleman that sold off the few he had last month?

Does anyone have a Bert Blyleven to share. Also wondering if anyone else has a Sutton.

Here are a couple of the other more difficult ones, not pictured yet, Carlton (Full, there is one graded as 9) & Sutton (this is the only graded one):

GDoggy,
Very nice examples of Carlton and Sutton's 3,000th K tickets! Congrats!
I don't know if I've ever seen a full to Carlton's.

Yes, I own a nice Sutton 3000th K ticket stub. Here's a picture of mine.

Anyone have a Randy Johnson SEASON ticket?

Hey Randall,
You betcha! Here you go!

I believe thats the only one I have seen!