A golfer was browsing through a Toronto thrift store when he came across a green jacket. The item looked interesting, and he knew this was an unusual find. It was priced at $5, so he bought it anyway.More than two decades later, the same jacket was sold for $139,349 at auction after Augusta National Golf Club confirmed that it was an authentic club jacket dating to the 1950s, Global News reported.The jacket was later known as a ‘thrift-store Masters jacket’, an unusual piece of golf memorabilia offered by Green Jacket Auctions in 2017.
A $5 find
An avid golfer and a member of the Canadian media discovered the jacket while browsing through a Toronto second-hand shop in 1994. He recognised the Augusta National branding and decided to buy it. He paid just $5 for the jacket, unaware of just how valuable it could eventually become. At the time, the jacket had no name, so its history remained unclear. But a tag on the jacket indicated that it dated to the 1950s. The jacket was later sold to a British golf journalist, who kept it for years before it eventually appeared at auction.
Augusta National identifies the jacket
The green jacket turned out to be an authentic Augusta National club jacket. Augusta National confirmed its authenticity. The green jacket is one of the most recognisable symbols in golf, and it is closely associated with Augusta National and the Masters Tournament.Members of the Georgia club wear these distinctive jackets, and the Masters winner traditionally receives one after winning the tournament. So they finalised that this jacket was a club member’s jacket, not one awarded to a Masters champion.During the auction, everything about the jacket, from its age and link to Augusta National to its unusual journey from a Toronto thrift store, made it a fascinating piece of golf memorabilia.
$5 jacket auctioned for $139,349
During the Spring 2017 golf-memorabilia sale, Green Jacket Auctions included this jacket. The auction featured a collection of historically significant Masters items.The bidding for this jacket began at $5,000 and attracted 34 bids before closing at $139,349.“We are blown away by the interest in golf memorabilia right now. The golf-collecting hobby has never been so strong. Yet, when you look at golf memorabilia compared to baseball and other sports, golf is selling at a relative bargain. Surely because of this we’re starting to see ‘smart’ money enter the hobby. Wealthy New Yorkers and international buyers who want the very best pieces are willing to pay what are record prices for the golf hobby because they believe that there is still a great deal of upside with the top pieces of memorabilia,” Ryan Carey, an attorney who is one of the two principals at Green Jacket Auctions, which was established in 2006, told Golf Digest.The buyer was a private collector from the United States. Green Jacket Auctions did not disclose the person’s identity.For the person who found the jacket at the thrift store, this sale was nothing less than a lottery. A jacket bought for $5 had become a six-figure collector’s item.Despite being sold for $139,349, this green jacket was far from the most expensive green jacket ever sold. Yes, you read that right. Back in 2013, a green jacket reportedly belonging to Horton Smith, who won the first Masters Tournament in 1934 and won again in 1936, was sold for $682,229. This 2017 sale, however, showed how much collectors were willing to pay for rare pieces of Masters history.