Today I show you three complete & unused Beatles concert tickets from their landmark 1964 American tour.
A lot of fans like to collect Beatle ticket stubs, but collecting an entire, unused Beatles concert ticket from any of their three mid-sixties tours of America is quite a challenge, because most of them were used, of course (and subsequently torn in half).
First up in this video is a Beatles concert ticket from Jacksonville, Fla. on Friday, Sept. 11, 1964.
A number of elements make this one of the better Beatle tickets out there, from any year. First and foremost, it features the famous 1963 Dezo Hoffman photo of the boys, which had adorned Capitol Records’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” picture sleeve earlier that year.
It also has the added touch of a second ink color, red, used to great effect. And then it has a very cool little radio station logo, “The Big Ape” – with cute gorilla pictured.
It wasn’t very often that the boys’ photo appeared on their concert tickets, especially from this calendar year. The very first ducat made with their picture on there was the Beatles August 22, 1964 ticket from Vancouver, BC’s Empire Stadium. Their mugs were faded into the background, but by gosh, they’re on there.
Next in line – with their photograph – was the Beatles ticket from September 3, 1964 from Indianapolis, Indiana’s state fair. A lot of different colors were printed for this date, but they all had their picture.
And the last one? A whole unused Beatles ticket from Cleveland on September 15, 1965 shows their happy faces, laid out vertically (most unusually). And that would be it for their inaugural touring year in America.
Next up in my video is a whole, unused Beatles concert ticket from Baltimore’s Civic Center on Sept. 13, 1964.
This ticket has been bootlegged, but the original has notches in it – as you can see – and the reproduction doesn’t. Plus the boot has a black back and is laminated in plastic. If you’re a serious collector of Beatles concert tickets and stubs like I am, stay away from those.
Collectors should note how strongly this Baltimore tic resembles the unused, complete Beatles ticket from Feb. 11, 1964 in Wash. D.C. Both tickets were obviously designed by the same company – the National Ticket Co. in PA.
And the same thing holds true for the whole, unused Beatles ticket or stub from February 12, 1964 at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Unlike the Jacksonville complete Beatles ticket, not much imagination was used in designing these others.
And the third and final item I show you in today’s video is the whole, un-torn Beatles ticket from Sept. 17, 1964 in Kansas City, Missouri at Municipal Stadium. Now this ticket is loaded with personality. The best feature of all? Why, it has a photograph on the back that depicts concert promoter Charles O. Finley in a Beatles wig, being tended to by his secretary (I assume) and holding a picture of Ringo. Wow!
Also a nice touch is the glossy, green and white appearance of this ticket, which matched the colors worn by Finley’s baseball team at Muni Stadium, the A’s. And then there’s that price – $8.50 – whew! The highest regular ticket price of any concert in the Beatles’ U.S. history.
So there you have three specimens of never-used, complete Beatles concert admission tickets from their American 1964 tour. If you have any of these, or any others for that matter, please don’t hesitate to contact me – I love to talk collectible tickets. I can be emailed at pete@postercentral.com or called on 805-540-0020.
And if you wanna see some other cool tix, including a purple Beatles one from ’66, just click over to this other page right here on my Web site: http://www.postercentral.com/tickets.htm
PosterCentral.com 