The PGA Show isn’t open to the public. The annual Orlando-based golf convention labels itself the “world’s doorway to the game’s future” and is a trade-only event.
It doesn’t matter how much you love golf, if you’re not working in the business, you can’t get in ... unless you have connections.
Bill Vogeney was already an avid golf collector in 1992, and luckily for him, he had friends working in the golf industry to lend him a badge to the cutting-edge showcase.
Back then Vogeney didn’t collect putters, instead, focusing his attention on persimmon woods and forged irons. If he found a nice putter, he typically sold or traded it. But in the early 1990s, mill putter technology was taking off, and Vogeney was interested in perusing the new market.
There, in Orlando, Vogeney encountered a putter unlike anything he’d seen before. It looked different and felt different, but he didn’t recognize the name.
“I said to myself, ‘Who the hell is Scott Cameron,’” Vogeney recalled.
But he was hooked. During his next visit to his home course, Vogeney ordered a Scotty Cameron Mizuno M-200 The Reason.
Today, Scotty Cameron is backed by Titleist, and Vogeney is the world’s foremost expert on his putters. In 2001, he published “The Art of Putters: The Scotty Cameron Story," and is one of the world’s biggest collectors of the sought-after putters. Vogeney was simply ahead of the curve.
Scotty Cameron putters dominate the golf collectible sphere. Their intricate designs and attention to detail showcase a grandeur seldom seen in golf. More importantly, some of golf’s biggest names, including Tiger Woods, swear by the craftsmanship. Seeing a “Circle T” design on the putters can turn a $500 club into $50,000.
Galleries spread from California to Japan, social-media loyalists number in the hundreds of thousands, and in order to join some of these esteemed groups, you must go through an application and approval process.
“People that are into collecting Scotty Cameron's are absolutely fanatical,” said Ryan Carey, president of Golden Age, a golf-only auction house. “I've never seen anything like it in collecting.”
Pandemic sparks golf boom
While many struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic, millions profited and turned to alternative assets. The research firm Market Decipher expects the collectibles industry to grow from $26 billion in 2021 to $227 billion by 2032.
And few sports, if any, were as positively impacted by the pandemic as golf. Each year, the National Golf Foundation publishes participation reports, detailing things such as: numbers of new players, how many rounds were played, how many courses were built, etc.
Despite restrictions limiting the ability to play in many states for much of the year, 2020 still marked the greatest year of growth the sports had seen in terms of total number of players in 17 years. And its participation among beginner and youth golfers was its highest since 1997, when Woods won his first Masters.
Each year since has only gotten better. Prior to the pandemic, the previous high for new golfers in a single year was 2.4 million in 2000. Since 2020, every year the number has exceeded 3 million, with it reaching 3.4 million in 2023. There have been more than 500 million rounds of golf played in the last four years, with 2023 marking an all-time high of 531 million.
There are now more golf courses nationwide than McDonald's restaurants, per NGF. The sport is booming, and its collectibles are following suit, especially with putters.
In an interview with Bloomberg last week, Scotty Cameron said, “It means something that people today don’t collect drivers. They don’t collect irons. They collect putters.”
Why is that?
Putters are different than any other club, said Steve Kashul, who has hosted “The Golf Scene” on NBC Sports Chicago for 31 years. Unlike other clubs, the best putter manufacturers aren’t mass producing, Kashul added. Their attention to detail for each putter is unique and creating in bulk isn’t standard.
“They’re a work of art,” Kashul said.
“Industrial art,” Carey added.
Kashul first met Cameron in the late 1990s when “The Golf Scene” did a feature on the young putter designer. Kashul and his team went out to California to watch Cameron craft clubs in his studio, and one thing was immediately certain.
“This guy's doing it differently than anyone else,” Kashul said.
A 'melting pot of collectors'
Nostalgia is a powerful drug, and Cameron is a dealer who can make anyone an addict.
Carey believes nobody “was once” a golfer. Anyone who is a golfer, is always a golfer, it just depends on if you’re at a point in your life where you can be a golfer. But COVID gave those “lost” golfers the opportunity to find it again.
“If you're living in New York City, it's really hard. If you’ve just gotten married or had kids, it's really hard. If you're a college student, it's hard,” Carey said. “But then there's other moments in your life where you just come back to it. COVID, I think, opened the floodgates of people coming back to golf.”
For many in the golf world, this was collecting, and with more people invested in golf than ever before, the hobby ballooned. Carey has always found certain groups of people stick to certain types of merchandise. Most older golf collectors are into antiques, while younger collectors may be more interested in cards. But Scotty Cameron putters transcend all.
“You cannot pinpoint the demographic. You cannot pinpoint the nationality,” Carey said. “All walks of life seem to gravitate towards Scotty Camerons. It’s this melting pot of collectors.”
That unification is what has allowed for such a tight-knit community to establish. Scotty Cameron social-media groups number in the hundreds, but members are in the thousands. One private Facebook group alone has 109,000 members with a board of administrators and an application . And none of that includes the other Facebook groups that pop up with 61,000 members or 29,000 and so on. The applications are in place to make sure people are there because they truly care about the hoppy.
At cllct, we attempted to join multiple Scotty Cameron Facebook groups and were rejected.
One Facebook group, Scotty Cameron Fanatics, has a detailed questionnaire for admission, asking about toe hang, grips and the rules of golf.
But, according to Kashul, the applications are important. The longtime golf host belongs to one of the Scotty Cameron Facebook groups, and says the questionnaires are important to weed out those who don’t actually care about the community.
“I feel like I’m a part of a group that is special,” Kashul said, “People like me who see the value in a Scotty Cameron putter.”
And each group has designated rules. Some specifically say “NO SELLING” in their headlines and anyone who tries to do so, will be booted from the group. In the same way an NBA or NFL team might have social-media groups of supporters, so, too, does Scotty Cameron.
Vogeney was an early influencer. He noticed in the late 1990s, there was ample commotion on golf chat boards of the early lore around Scotty Cameron putters. But people didn’t know where to turn for answers, and he didn’t want fellow collectors getting screwed.
Vogeney filled the void, becoming one of the first “influencers” in the Scotty Cameron space, which eventually led him to publishing his book on Cameron.
“The community is all about helping other collectors,” Vogeney said.
Fit to a T
In collecting Scotty Camerons, it’s best to think of them in two sections: off-the-rack and Circle T’s.
Off-the-rack simply indicates that an individual can purchase them at any golf retail store. Where the off-the-rack Scotty Camerons affect the market is in flipping. People with experience designing and refurbishing putters will purchase a Scotty Cameron at a sporting goods store for $400 or $500, customize it and then sell it on a secondary market for $2,000 or $3,000.
But the massive money is in the Circle T.
What differentiates a Circle T putter from other Scotty Cameron putters is the “T” stands for “tour”, meaning it is designed specifically for PGA Tour use. When it comes to collectors, they crave the Circle T, even if they don’t know what it means.
Vogeney said he and his friends, who are also collectors, will laugh when they see people comment on Scotty Cameron social media pages looking to purchase a putter, because they won’t care what type of putter, as long as it has the Circle T logo.
“That's kind of like saying I want a car,” Vogeney said. “What kind of car (do you want)?”
Except, these putters are often worth as much, if not more than the average car.
Do a basic search online, and your jaw might drop at the prices of Circle T putters on secondary markets. Flippers can turn an off-the-rack Scotty Cameron for a profit of $2,000. Circle T flippers can do the same for $50,000.
The GSS Newport 2 Timeless ranges from $25,000 to $50,000 depending on the site. The “Smooth Face” GSS Timeless TourType Newport 2 Circle T can be found between $40,000 to $50,000.
The past five years were a perfect storm for Scotty Cameron prices to skyrocket.
In the past, Circle T’s only appeared on secondary markets. This, combined with an influx of cash during the pandemic, a rapidly increasing number of golfers, and a booming alternative asset industry have led to putters worth more than college tuition.
“Even in 2000, you know the Scotty mania was for real,” Vogeney said. “But compared to Scotty mania now and the collector interest now and prices (in 2000 were) still a shadow of its of its current itself.”
But now, collectors can purchase Circle T’s straight from the source, via two options. The first is a “drop” on the Scotty Cameron website. The Scotty Cameron custom shop confirmed these drops only happen on Wednesdays between 8:30-9:30 a.m. PT. Thousands of fans clamor online, trying to purchase one of just a handful of Circle T’s when they become available.
The other option is purchasing it from one of two Scotty Cameron galleries. The first is in Encinitas, California, a beach city in San Diego County with a population of 61,000. The gallery is only open five-and-a-half hours per day, and a phone call to the gallery is answered by a recording preaching the gospel of Scotty Cameron’s work, headlined with “sold-out product can be an unfortunate outcome.” The other gallery is in Tokyo.
The scarcity is what had led auction houses, such as Golden Age, to offer Scotty Camerons. The supply never meets the demand, and Golden Age could thrive in the resale market.
“It has been the greatest lead generation of any area we've ever had,” Carey said. “When we have an auction that has Scotty Camerons ... The number of people that sign up is unlike anything else.”
And with the international appeal of Scotty Camerons, Golden Age knows it is a reliable source for authentic clubs that people can turn to, rather than looking to other sellers.
“It's one thing to buy a $600 putter on a message board or on eBay,” Carey said. “But, you're gonna buy something overseas, and you put $25,000 or $100,000, well, you better find a trusted person to do that from.”
The Tiger effect
Scotty Cameron recognition first entered the ethos in 1993 when Bernhard Langer won the Masters, but it was in 1997 when the brand exploded.
There’s a common moniker in sports when mentioning athletes capable of “moving the needle," meaning athletes who can push an entire brand. Recent examples include how viewers watch the NBA Finals when LeBron James is playing vs. when he isn’t, or how Nike’s stock plummeted when Zion Williamson blew out his shoe.
The circumstances around golf are different, though.
Tiger Woods always has and still continues to raise the bar in generating golf coverage. But Woods doesn’t just move the needle, he is the needle. And when he won the 1997 Masters using a Scotty Cameron Teryllium Newport, the world took notice.
Carey was just a teenager when Woods won his first major, and within days (possibly the same day, he isn’t sure), was trying to purchase a Scotty Cameron for himself.
“It was not given in a golf shop. It wasn’t one of the putters laying around that you can put with on the little artificial turf. It was in a case,” Carey said. “Why did he have to get a lock and key just to let me see it."
And Woods’ influence on the Scotty Cameron market remains.
During a press conference in 2016, the 15-time major winner (then 14-time) said his son, Charlie, knows there are two putters that are totally off limits. The first is the putter he won the 1997 Masters with. The other, he won his next 14 majors with. Both are Scotty Camerons.
Cameron came up with possibly the two greatest marketing schemes in golf history. The first was the Circle T design to delineate tour vs non-tour clubs. The second was the red dot on Woods’ putter. And it was actually a mistake.
In 1999, Cameron was designing a new putter for Woods, the Newport 2. But the design was slightly too heavy, so Cameron milled two dots and filled them in with red paint. Woods went on to win 14 more majors with the “cherry bombs” and they’ve become so famous that Golden Age sold one of his backup putters with the red dot for $393,300 in 2021, the highest price ever paid for a single club.
“What separates Scotty is he's got an eye for design,” Vogeney said. “He has worked with Tour players for 35-plus years. He knows what they're looking for. He knows their demands. He's a good listener so he can listen and respond to their critique. But he's also got a good eye himself, and he knows what a golf club should look like.”
The best comparison to Woods and Cameron, Carey said, is Michael Jordan’s impact on Nike. Scotty Camerons aren’t going to make anyone a better golfer, and Jordans aren’t going to make anyone a better basketball player. Individuals might find more comfort using them as opposed to other models, which can positively impact their game, but they will not raise your skill level. But in the same way people want to be “like Mike”, they want to be like Tiger.
"(Cameron) was there on his own before that. He was signed with Titleist before that. But Scotty Cameron was the thing that everyone had to have because of Tiger Woods," Carey said. "Tiger Woods made Scotty Cameron who he is, absolutely.”
Vogeney said and has always said he doesn’t collect Scotty Camerons for the pageantry, he collects them because he values the craftsmanship and believes they’re the best putters on the market. But he certainly recognizes that for most people, vanity is a driving force.
“They’re clearly a status symbol,” Vogeney said. “I can buy a driver for $500 but if I buy a driver for $1,000 Am I going to drive the ball twice as far twice as good? Hell no.”
Cameron has previously said he wanted his name in golf to evoke the same energy as Tiffany or Rolex. The top of the line in luxury.
“I saw a joke online saying all these people are lining up for these expensive putters and drivers, the best in the world, and no one's laying out for golf lessons,” Kashul said. "Some have come and some have gone. But no one has an impact like a Scotty Cameron putter.”
Matt Liberman is a reporter and video producer for cllct.