About Collectible Stadium Seats

Sports enthusiasts place a high priority on collectible items connected to their team or favorite players. This can mean a jersey worn by a famous player, a ball signed by the winning quarterback or a poster or sports card. Fans who want to remember their time in the stands, however, have a different priority: stadium seats taken directly from the stadiums themselves.

  1. Types

    • Some collectible stadium seats come from existing stadiums, following renovations or other work. Factory overruns are common, too, as seats intended for a particular stadium are sometimes never installed. The real market, however, lies in seats for stadiums that no longer exist. Places like the Polo Grounds in Brooklyn, Boston Garden, the old Soldier Field in Chicago and Yankee Stadium in the Bronx (which saw its last game in 2008) witnessed some of the greatest moments in sports history. While the venues may be gone, seats and bleachers from the stands remain, giving sports enthusiasts a chance to own a piece of those great games.

    Considerations

    • As with other collectible items, stadium seats are worth more if they are in fine condition. Paint may have peeled, wood may be rotting and the process of removing the seats may not have been entirely professional. Some seats available online were purchased through middlemen, who may have removed the seats illegally or as part of a promotion on the stadium's last day. Repainting, rewooding and other forms of restoration may be necessary as well, which costs more money and lowers the value somewhat. A stadium seat from a classic venue, kept in good condition and featuring its original components, can fetch thousands of dollars from the right collector.

    Considerations

    • Frauds and copies are a problem with collectible stadium seats. They can be harder to authenticate than autographs or sports cards, and a replica that matches an authentic seat exactly can be very hard to spot as a fake. The best stadium seat dealers will include certificates of authenticity with their products, and will have removed the seats themselves rather than going through third-party sources.

    Features

    • Seats can be grouped together in twos and threes--or even sold as entire rows--which can help preserve an aesthetic sense of the venue when they are purchased. Specific seat numbers can be adjusted, too, with the markers removed and new ones attached to match the buyer's specifications, such as a lucky number or a favored player's jersey number. Commemorative plaques and components autographed by famous players are included on some stadium seats, though obviously that marks the price up a great deal.

    Expert Insight

    • Companies that provide collectible stadium seating are usually involved in more than just the sports memorabilia business. Many are construction companies specializing in seat removal, and others work to refurbish or rebuild seats for smaller local stadiums used for high school sports and the like. Since collectible stadium seating is a fairly specialized hobby, most companies are available online in order to reach the maximum number of customers. Those with strictly local clientele tend to focus on local stadiums only. For example, a local company in Philadelphia might have seats from the city's old Veteran's Stadium, but not from the Kingdome in Seattle.