Theater Tickets From Abraham Lincoln's Assassination Sell For $262K

BOSTON, MA — Two tickets reportedly used to attend a play at Ford's Theater the night President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated sold at auction last weekend for more than $262,000.

The "exceedingly rare" pair of balcony tickets to the production of "Our American Cousin" on April 14, 1865 — during which Lincoln was shot and killed by John Wilkes Booth — sold at auction Saturday for $262,500, according to RR Auction in Boston.

During the third act of the play, Booth entered Lincoln's box from behind and fired a bullet into the back of the president's head while he sat next to his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. Booth then dropped his pistol and waved a dagger before vaulting over the railing onto the stage below.

After Booth fled, Lincoln was carried to a nearby boarding house where he died. Booth was shot and captured several days later while hiding in a barn near Bowling Green, Virginia. He died on April 26, 1985.

The tickets, according to RR Auction, were for front-row seats 41 and 42D in the theater's dress circle. According to the auction site, the ticket holders would have been seated directly across from the president's box with a "perfect view" of his assassination.

RR Auction said the circular date stamp on the tickets was an exact match to those seen on authentic tickets currently housed in a collection at Harvard University's Houghton Library.

The original owners of the tickets are unknown.

According to a Washington Post report, the seller of the tickets was an anonymous manuscript collector from Southern California. That person purchased them at an auction in 2002 for $83,650.

When the Post asked who purchased the tickets Saturday, RR Auction's executive vice president would only say the buyer was one of the world’s top collectors of Americana.