Boston auction house RR Auction recently sold two Ford’s Theatre tickets dated 14 April 1865, including handwritten details such as the prime front-row seat assignments. They are believed to have been used the night John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln.
On that day, the tickets cost about $0.75 each, but they just sold for $262,500, more than twice the estimate. Call it antique inflation. The tickets are very rare, and Harvard University owns the only known ticket from that evening.
The auctioned tickets are for section D, seats 41 and 42, which meant the seats were in the front row of the theater’s upper level and across from the box occupied by President Lincoln, his wife Mary Todd, Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée, Clara Harris.
Theatergoers attended that night to see actress Laura Keene starring in the comedy, “Our American Cousin.” Instead, they were witnesses to an American tragedy.
