Skip to main content

Last week, the Jeffery B. Ellis Antique Golf Club Collection was sold at auction by Sotheby's for $2,166,210, the highest total for a golf memorabilia collection. Ellis, 55, a golf historian from Oak Harbor, Wash., and runner up in the 1982 U.S. Mid-Amateur, was a full-time collector for 30 years and gathered almost 800 items spanning four centuries, from the 1600s to the end of the hickory shaft era in the 1930s. Why sell? "It's been so much stress to maintain," he says. "When I'd leave home, I used to wonder if there'd be a fire." Ellis described seven of his favorite items.

Credit: Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

NEXT SLIDE