By Rae A. Ecklund
I am not a golfer, unless you count the times I played a few rounds on a Putt-Putt course, but my husband, Gary Proctor, is and once I got him hooked on going to garage sales, flea markets, estate sales, antique shops, thrift shops and rummage sales with me, he also evolved into a collector of vintage wood-shafted golf clubs, with which he now plays golf and repairs as well.
I once collected marbles and had an extensive collection that I sold for a handsome price. Gary’s passion for golf led me to think that golf balls might fill the collecting void left by “the loss of my marbles.” Thus a new hobby (for me) was born. Now, many years later I admit I enjoy the golf balls more than I did the marbles, mostly because other people relate to golf balls better than marbles. Just about everybody is familiar with golf even if they don’t play the game.
Nor do they have to play golf to find my golf ball collection interesting, the majority of which does not involve antique and rare golf balls such as featheries, brambles, and gutta perchas, which are way before my time and considerably expensive to acquire. (See above for information on collecting those balls.) Instead, my collection mainly involves balls from my own era – the 1940s to the present.
Older ones are challenging to find in pristine condition, especially those that are imprinted with pro-golfers names, sometimes in a script to resemble an autograph. In turn, what adds interest and collectibility to many current golf balls is the printing on their surfaces – of company logos, brands, and/or products. These are often referred to as “advertising,” “brand,” or “logo” balls. Some have the names and logos of golf courses, places and things. Others display cartoon characters, humorous sayings, animals, birds – you name it, someone has created a golf ball decorated with something important to them. For me, these are fun to find and display.
In fact, the Ball Room in our house is not for dancing. Visitors are generally fascinated by the displays of several thousand golf balls with different themes, logos, etc. Most recognize one or more groupings of special interest to them and are inspired to share stories of their own regarding what golf ball(s) caught their interest in particular or about golf ball displays in general. That to me is where the real value lies in collecting – the conversations such a collection generates and the friendships begun or enhanced as a result.
One such friend is Rives McBee, a retired professional golfer whose enviable collection includes golf balls hand-signed by fellow pro golfers he has met on tour and the priceless stories that come with them. I’ve proudly created a golf ball display in the Ball Room dedicated to Rives, honoring both his notable career and our decades-long friendship that evolved from a shared interest in golf ball collecting.
Bear in mind that collectible golf balls are worth only what someone is willing to pay for them. Garage or rummage sales may turn up a whole bucket for $5 or less. I have paid as much as a dollar a ball and as little as a nickel. Sometimes people give me balls free if they just want to get rid of clutter. I once went to a garage sale and bought a large, beautiful wooden golf ball display unit for just $10 that included a bag of several dozen golf balls which I didn’t even look through until I got them home. I discovered each ball featured a different golf course from around the world! I learned that their owner had been a commercial airline pilot, who played golf wherever his flights took him and that he’d saved a ball from each of those courses. The family, to my amazement, was not interested in the balls, so I am now curator to this man’s golf and travel history. The lesson, of course, is that value is in the eye of the beholder.
My primary advice to beginning ball collectors is that you focus on the ones which interest you, enjoy them and the process of finding and displaying them, and let that be their primary worth. Egg cartons work great to store balls that you don’t have room to display. Sometimes a spin-off collection comes out of items used to display golf balls. For example, I now have a secondary collection of unusual shot glasses each of which serves as an individual, decorative golf ball holder.
As with all collections, whatever you invest in time, money and creativity hopefully brings rewarding satisfaction above all else and opens doors to possibilities you never imagined existed. Who knows? I might still become a golfer, one supplied with a couple hundred thousand golf balls to hit into the rough. FORE!