When Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson in Tokyo 35 years ago today, the journeyman heavyweight scored what was unquestionably one of the greatest upsets in sports history.
On Feb. 11, 1990, the Mirage in Las Vegas booked a $1,500 bet that paid out 38/1 when Douglas shocked the undefeated Tyson. A long shot in a horse race in a field of six might be 38/1, but it's almost unheard of in a bout between just two competitors.
Ticket collectors gravitate to upsets.
From the "Miracle on Ice" in the 1980 Winter Olympics, to Super Bowl III in 1969, to NC State over Houston in 1983 and Villanova over Georgetown in 1985, the shocking results always make for great collectibles.
But finding a Tyson-Douglas ticket is extremely difficult.
PSA has only graded six stubs and three full tickets from the fight.
Sure, the fight was in the Tokyo Dome in Japan, but those who were witnesses to the 10th-round knockout knew how historic the moment was. And there were an estimated 40,000 people there, too. All with physical tickets.
Compare the nine Douglas-Tyson tickets to the "Miracle on Ice," which happened 10 years prior, when collecting was even more nascent. PSA has graded 157 tickets to the U.S. hockey team's upset of the USSR, only 25 of them used.
Well, the Lake Placid Olympic Committee printed a ton of extra tickets, resulting in a huge amount of "Miracle" tickets when collectors became interested.
Super Bowls are also a different animal because they are seemingly immediately collectible to someone in the stands.
PSA has graded 331 tickets from Super Bowl III in 1969, when Joe Namath guaranteed a Jets' victory over the Baltimore Colts as huge underdogs.
There are 25 tickets graded from the night Jimmy Valvano and NC State stunned Phi Slamma Jamma and 18 from when Villanova knocked off Patrick Ewing's Georgetown.
So, how can there be only nine from Tyson-Douglas?
Being disappointed with the result could have played a factor for fans in attendance. Many likely came to see Tyson's dominance.
That was certainly the case for Michael Jordan's "The Shot" over Craig Ehlo. Only 20 have been graded from that 1989 home playoff game in Cleveland and who can blame Cavs fans for not wanting to preserve that memory?
That also probably explains why only 28 tickets have been graded from Appalachian State's huge upset of Michigan at the Big House in 2007. More than 100,000 tickets were printed, but not many Michigan fans were putting those on their bulletin boards.
The answer to why so few Douglas-Tyson tickets remain could also lie in the actual ticket itself.
"I think some of it definitely has to do with how simple the ticket is," said Matt Fuller, head authenticator of tickets at PSA.
A pink and blue ticket, all in Japanese, except DON KING PRODUCTIONS, is quite bland. It's not a beautiful ticket to the Japanese, who value art and aesthetics.
PSA has been flooded with Japanese movie tickets, which, unlike their American counterparts, contain the movie poster art on them. PSA has graded 12 Japanese movie tickets from "Home Alone," which was shown in the country a year after the Tyson-Douglas fight.
There's definitely a history of tickets that are more aesthetically pleasing being kept with greater regularity. It's why, ironically, boxing tickets from the 1920s to 1940s are more readily available than one would expect.
If Tyson-Douglas had been in the United States, there would probably be many more graded tickets today.
There's certainly a premium placed on any new one to surface — a PSA 3 from the fight sold privately last year for $10,000.
"I'm starting to feel like there won't be many more to surface," said Fuller, who might see one raw example a year. "I think tickets have grown enough that even if a ticket is from an event that happened internationally, that we would have started to see them by now."
Darren Rovell is the founder of cllct.com and one of the country's leading reporters on the collectibles market. He previously worked for ESPN, CNBC and The Action Network. He owns one of the nine graded tickets to the Tyson-Douglas fight in 1990.