It was a disappointing end to the season for a team that was within striking distance of a long-awaited return to the Super Bowl. For fans of Green Bay Packers history, though, January is still packing plenty of great moments– thanks to a couple of discoveries surrendered by decades old pieces of furniture.
A ticket and one-page program from a 1924 game emerged from the drawer of an antique end table while a pair of full tickets to a Lombardi-era playoff masterpiece literally fell out of an old book. Both wound up at Heritage Auctions.
The program and ticket stub were found inside a desk after a man in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan went to his grandmother’s house looking for replacement furniture after a flood. He opened the drawer of an end table where the items had apparently been stored for nearly 100 years.
They’re from an October 19, 1924 matchup at Green Bay’s Bellevue Park between the Packers and Milwaukee Badgers, an early NFL franchise that lasted only a few seasons. A few programs from that game have surfaced over the years but the stub is the only one of its kind known to exist—and the earliest Packers home stub ever auctioned.
The items are being solid together in the Heritage February Platinum Auction where, thanks to a competitive assembly of Packers collectors, they’re expected to sell for $10,000 or more.
The program is a single printed sheet (11×8.5″) that displays rosters that include Hall of Famers Curly Lambeau of Green Bay and Jimmy Conzelman of Milwaukee.
Lambeau passed for one touchdown and caught another on a trick play as the Packers scored 17 unanswered fourth quarter points to grab a win in front of the home crowd.
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Another contact for potential consignment led to a find of two important–and valuable–unused tickets to one of the most memorable games in NFL history. A death in the family led to a Wisconsin couple acquiring an old bookcase. When they began going through the books inside, something instantly recognizable fell out of one of them.
Chris Nerat of Heritage got the story from the consignor.
The tickets will be offered at auction this coming May.
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Notes: Topps Release Dates; Gregorius Autograph Deal; West Coast Football Find
