When bidding began last month on the ceremonial green jacket belonging to the first winner of the Masters, Horton Smith, those overseeing the auction hoped it would fetch in the neighborhood of $100,000.
When bidding closed Sunday, the 64-year-old garment was hanging in a much more upscale neighborhood. An unidentified buyer claimed Smith’s jacket for $682,229. Pants were not included.
“This was one of those situations where the best of the best sells for a lot more than say, just a decent item,” said Ryan Carey, president of the Tampa-based Green Jacket Auctions. “The final number definitely caught us by surprise. I initially didn’t want to focus on an end number and instead focus on just the publicity and talking to the right people. But there was always a recipe for a huge success with the number, quantity and quality of the people bidding on it.”
Collectibles from other sports have fetched significantly more. A Babe Ruth jersey sold for $4.4 million in 2012. James Naismith’s original draft of rules for basketball went for $4.3 million in 2010. But, according to Carey, the Green Jacket sale price was a record for modern era golf memorabilia.
The price far eclipsed the $63,000 that Doug Ford’s 1957 green jacket brought at auction three years ago. “People are willing to pay a multiple of that to obtain a much better one,” Carey said.
“It was a very heavily contested ending (to the online auction). It was not a case of two people fighting over it. It was a case of eight people and organizations fighting over it,” he added.
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