For more than a century, the cornerstone of autograph collecting has been a penned signatures of an athlete on the ball from his or her respective sport.
None is more famous than a baseball signed by Babe Ruth, of which thousands exist.
But a less famous example from one of Ruth’s sporting contemporaries is actually more valuable in many cases, and far rarer: A Bobby Jones-signed golf ball.
It’s believed less than a dozen exist, with one selling for more than $100,000 in 2022 at Golden Age Auctions.
That same golf ball, which the auction house says is the finest in existence, is once again on the auction block at Golden Age, ending this Sunday in conjunction with the final round of the Masters. Bidding is currently at nearly $20,000.
Jones helped design Augusta National Golf Club and was one of the founders of the Masters.
The extraordinary scarcity of Jones-signed golf balls is explained in Golden Age’s lot description, which cites the difficulty of signing a “slick, non-porous, dimpled surface of a golf ball” compared to the relative ease of applying an autograph to the rawhide of a baseball.
“Attempting to sign a golf ball with a fountain pen was usually an exercise in futility. Even if successful, the chances of that signature (sitting on top of the hard shell surface rather than bleeding into the leather of a baseball) still remaining 100 years later is slim to none.”
Golden Age says it has identified just three Jones-autographed golf balls with little to no fading, including the “finest” example currently at auction. They also sold one of the others in April 2011 for more than $50,000.
Jones’ signature is dated to his playing days in the 1920s and appears on a Spalding Kro-Flite model ball, the same model used by Jones. Golden Age says the ball will “almost certainly set the new record for an autographed golf ball.”
Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct, the premier company for collectible culture.