“Fords Theatre Tickets from Night of Lincoln’s Assassination Sold for Record Price”

A pair of tickets to Ford’s Theatre on the night Abraham Lincoln was assassinated have been sold for a staggering amount of money.

The tickets, which were in excellent condition, were purchased for $262,500 through RR Auction. They are dated April 14, 1865, and specifically state that they are for Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C.

The tickets would have placed the owners in section D, seats 41 and 42. These seats were on the opposite side of the theater from Lincoln’s balcony and would have offered an unobstructed view of the former president’s assassination.

In case you need a reminder, John Wilkes Booth, who was an actor, used his knowledge of the theater to sneak into Lincoln’s booth during the 3rd act of “Our American Cousin” and shoot him in the head, right next to First Lady Mary Todd, just days after the Civil War ended.

By the way, there aren’t many tickets from that fateful night still in existence. One of them is at Harvard’s Houghton Library, although it’s only half of the full ticket. This ticket was used to verify the authenticity of the balcony tickets sold at auction.

It goes without saying that these rare tickets are worth a lot, but here’s the funny part…back then, you could have bought the same seat for only 75 cents, and private boxes would have cost you up to $10. Talk about inflation!