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.