1934 Masters Tournament Series Ticket (1 of 3 Known)

The 1934 ticket is one of the most highly prized of all Masters collectibles. (Sports Collector's Daily) 

Offered here is one of only 3 known full-week Series Tickets (what we now call "Badges") to the first Masters Tournament.

The Inaugural playing of the Masters Tournament - then called the Augusta National Invitation Tournament - was held to relatively little fanfare in 1934. That the tournament received press attention at all was largely due to the fact that the great Bobby Jones was coming out of retirement for the first time since completing the Grand Slam in 1930. Gene Sarazen and Byron Nelson did not attend. Neither did Tommy Armour, Lawson Little, Olin Dutra, or Jimmy Thomson. The field did include Walter Hagen, Horton Smith, and Craig Wood, among others - all likely in attendance out of respect for Bobby Jones. 

The above facts help explain the dearth of memorabilia from the 1934 Masters Tournament - what is now seen as one of the most significant events in golf history was simply not supposed to be a big deal in 1934. Save for a few dozen surviving programs from the 1934 Masters, there are almost no other pieces of memorabilia that originate from the first offering of the Masters Tournament. 

As far as tickets to the 1st Masters Tournament, less than 10 total tickets are known to have survived the intervening 85 years. This includes a small handful of single day tickets, and exactly 3 full-week Series Tickets (what we now call Masters "Badges"). 

In April last year, The Golf Auction sold a very nice, though somewhat less desirable, single day (Sunday) ticket for $118,598 - reportedly the highest price ever paid for a sports ticket. 

When it comes to the full-week badges or "Series" tickets, here are the 3 surviving examples:

Badge #1999 - Owned by Augusta National Golf Club

Badge #1970 - Autographed by multiple golfers. Owned by Private Collector 

Badge #1102 - Offered for Sale in this Auction Lot 

The front of this ticket is very clean, likely owing to the fact that it was discovered on a 1934 album page alongside newspaper clippings from the tournament. That album page was sold at a Heritage Auction in 2012. At the conclusion of that auction, the winning bidder (and our consignor today, who happens to own the other privately owned 1934 Series ticket) had a restoration specialist remove this ticket from the scrapbook page. The ticket has no writing on the back - probably because it was attached to (and then removed from) a scrapbook page. There is a small crease by the string hole and another crease on the lower portion of the ticket.

The offered '34 Masters badge is a "Holy Grail" piece - the most coveted ticket to a golf tournament, if not any sports event, in the collecting hobby.  

**We've added a photo of all 3 known Series Tickets/Badges from the 1934 Masters Tournament - together briefly a few years ago for a special photo op