A Masters green jacket sold for nearly $700,000 at an auction

You know the one piece of clothing that every golfer dreams of owning? Well, these days you don’t necessarily need a precise short game and ridiculous mental focus, just three quarters of a million dollars and some dumb luck.

That’s what happened over the weekend, when GreenJacketAuctions.com sold Horton Smith’s former Masters jacket for $ 689,229.

The backstory is simply that two men came into the jacket after the passing of a family member who was keeping the jacket of the 1934 and ’36 Masters champion. Smith’s jacket is the only one of the “original 10” green jackets that wasn’t accounted for, but Green Jacket Auctions got approached about selling the jacket, and figured they could get somewhere in the ballpark of $ 100,000 for this one.

It appears their projections were just a bit low.

Why did Smith’s jacket go for so much money considering the same auction company sold Doug Ford’s 1957 jacket for just $ 62,967?

Besides the fact that Smith was the winner of the inaugural Masters tournament, it may have something to do with how historical one of the “original 10” are to the golf community.

Via the press release …

The Masters Tournament began awarding Green Jackets to its Champions at the 1949 Masters when newly minted Champ Sam Snead and the 9 previous Masters Winners were first given their jackets. These so-called “Original 10” Green Jackets are among the most coveted pieces of modern golf history, the bulk of which are owned by Augusta National Golf Club or the World Golf Hall of Fame. But the Green Jacket awarded to the first Masters Champion, Horton Smith, had been “lost” for decades.

So that should should explain just how important it was to not only find Smith’s jacket, but be able to get the world bidding on it.

No word on who was able to snag the green jacket, but that person is now the proud owner of the most expensive piece of golf memorabilia ever.

Devil Ball Golf – Golf – Yahoo! Sports