Vintage 50s Era Masters Jacket Found in Thrift Store for $5 Sells for $139,000 at Auction

Jon Rahm of Spain plays his shot from the seventh tee during a practice round prior to the

With the winner of the 2017 Masters golf tournament determined, pro golf is in the news, but the famed green jacket is also in the news for a different reason after an authentic trophy coat was discovered hanging in a thrift store in Canada.

As the long-struggling Sergio Garcia finally raced to the top to win his chance to don the green jacket, an authentic 1950s era Masters jacket turned up on an auction site after being bought for $5 at a thrift store. The final price for the sale brought the owner a hefty $139,000.

Calling it the Infamous “Thrift Store” Green Jacket, the auction site shows a starting bid of five grand but a final sale price of $139,348.

According to the auction site, the jacket was discovered in a Toronto thrift store in 1994, but the embroidered tag identifying which famed golfer won the piece was torn out. Tournament officials authenticated the piece as a real Master’s trophy jacket from the 1950s — one of the earliest in existence — but they refused to speculate as to which Masters champion may have originally won it.

Clearly, more detective work needs to be done to find that final piece of the puzzle, but other than missing the tag of its winner’s name it is said to be the finest original jacket of its age in existence.

This isn’t the first authentic green jacket that turned up at auction. The Toronto “thrift store jacket” joins another such find from 2015. The earlier sale was of a 1960s era jacket and was sold privately for an undisclosed amount, the New York Daily News reported.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.