Madonna at the Haçienda to Obama’s inauguration: the tickets we can’t bear to throw away

As QR codes take over, Guardian writers and readers share their prized paper stubs – including the Beatles at Shea Stadium and the Nirvana gig that never was

The physical ticket – to a gig or a play or a comedy show or a sporting event – is a vanishing entity. It has been, or at least is being, replaced by the e-ticket conveniently mailed to your inbox (a state of affairs that curiously doesn’t seem to have negated the need for a handling charge), or the QR code, swiftly scanned on your phone.

It probably won’t be long before it vanishes entirely, consigned to the dustbin of history with all the other pop cultural ephemera we no longer need: mountains of DVDs; fanclubs that furnished us with badges and posters by mail; the lost art of taping songs off the radio.