Ticket stub from first NY Islanders regular season game sells on eBay

Who wouldn't want to own a piece of New York Islanders history or at least half of a piece of New York Islanders history?

According to longtime sports business reporter Darren Rovell, who has since moved on to found Cllct Media, a premiere collectible media site, someone paid $1,253 on eBay for a ticket stub to the team's first regular-season game in their history against the Atlanta Flames.

Ticket stub from first NY Islanders regular season game sells on eBay

The orange stub, or should we say half a stub, is partially taped, but you can clearly make out the date of Saturday, Oct.7, 1972, and the game was held at the brand new Nassau Coliseum on Long Island. The ticket price for the ticket in section 202 of the "loge" section was $8.00 for Row C, Seat 8. That seat would've put you right on the blue line for the Isles' first game in the NHL, a 3-2 loss to the Flames, another expansion team.

Whoever owned that ticket and had it in his wallet or her purse that night saw Eddie Westfall score the franchise's first goal on the power-play at the 19:27 mark of the 1st period. Billy Harris scored late in the third to make it a one-goal game, but Phil Goyette's team would lose their opener, one of 60 regulation losses in that first season, which finished with a 12-60-6 record and a different coach.

Before the days of bar codes and apps on your phone, the way you gained entry to games was by arena or stadium workers ripping your paper stub in half. For that reason, you'll be hard-pressed to find a fully intact stub from Islanders' games in the 1970s and 1980s.

A search on eBay for vintage Islanders ticket stubs shows that currently up for bid is a complete half-torn set of 1979-1980 playoff tickets which culminated in the franchise's first Stanley Cup. The current highest bid for that at the time of publishing this story if $5.50. At the same time, one seller has a price tag of $59.99 as a starting bid for a ripped ticket to Ziggy Palffy's NHL debut in 1994.

One's man's Isles' trash, is another man's Isles' treasure. Happy bidding!