Inside The World’s Largest Golf Club Collection | Golf Digest

When Golden Age Auctions told us they were buying the world’s largest private golf club collection, we knew we had to see it. We traveled to Chicago to meet owner Bill Slevin, see the collection and hear about how and why he collected nearly 10,000 rare and valuable golf clubs.

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holy yeah take let’s take a look there’s there’s a lot to see for classic Club collectors that’s pretty much the holy Grill this is a life time of collecting [Music] here so today’s the big one it’s uh Bill seven the golf club collector biggest golf club collection in the World um not really sure what we’re going to going to find in there but we’re going to dig through thousands and thousands of clubs so uh I mean it does doesn’t get much crazier than this collection and uh he says he’s got the best stuff uh in the world best collection in the world and let’s see if it lives up to that this collection just the the scope of it the sheer size of it is something that uh we’ve never seen before I don’t think the Hobby’s ever seen before it has a chance to change the entire collecting industry uh not to mention you know our company we’re talking about clubs from the 1850s through Modern Scotty Cameron so that’s highly unusual no one really collects like that and so uh I’m excited to see that I think it’ll be important to take a mental note each time of which clubs are best for auction which clubs are most valuable which ones do my collectors want to see and that’s really what I want to get out of today from the talking to bill on the phone uh he’s an absolute character he’s a a car dealer owner by trade and Chicago guy No Nonsense uh love the guy already I can’t wait to you know tourist collection with him and learn why he collected all the stuff why does he have this massive collection that not only cost millions of dollars but he just didn’t tell people about it he really kept it in secret which is just wild that doesn’t happen in the [Music] hobby my name is Bill seven I’m a golf club collector [Music] hey hey greetings how’s it going Bill good come on in yeah let’s go let’s go look at a collection there’s a lot to look at all right yeah I I I got started probably all in the late 1980s I always kind of was fascinated with golf clubs they were just interesting said many times they’re like pieces of artwork you know just the more intricate they are the more unusual they are the more fun to collect in that and know usually the value is higher on them but you know once you get started with it you get the bug and then you just keep collecting and then all a sudden I just you know spread the collection out and it went from you know classic clubs the Hickory clubs the you know then golf balls and you start you know just start spreading out holy yeah take let’s take a look there’s there’s a lot to see there’s a there I I’d have to guess there’s at least 5,000 I’d say there’s probably at least 5,000 clubs Phil this is insane yeah I mean you got Wilson prototype irons never were put into production these actually are two of the last sets that came off McGregor a lot of Hickory I mean a lot of stuff back when Callaway people don’t even realize Callaway Callaway was originally Hickory people says Callaway that’s titanium they were hickory too I’ve never seen anything like this thing is when you start collecting hundreds of years of clubs there’s like you know it’s almost like endless you you can never get all of it that’s that’s kind of like the challenge to any kind of collector you never can get all of it oh man you’ve got a lot of great Hickory here Tom Stewart’s right there Bobby Jones a lot of a lot of mint I mean a lot of mint uh m you got really soon you got all the woods you have McGregor you know Spalding Wilson you got you got everybody you got all the makers they wonder how the heck did you do this and then then a lot of me ask why did you do this so that’s that’s a good question also but it’s it’s pretty impressive I mean if you come sit here in this room and look around you’re looking at hundreds and hundreds of years of History it just to me it’s it’s it’s mindboggling when you start looking at some of this stuff so here we got all Hickory everything here is old oh yeah yeah the chieftain this is probably one of the rarest Hickory that you can get more put Putters back here these are all Putters these are all fabulous Hickory sets all matched up look at the old wicker bag these are all the old stove pipe bags yeah oh I mean you could play these too it takes a long time to put these together and then you got to find the right bags and everything you got to get period correct and all so this this assembling this is no you know easy task here’s ‘s a basically a museum here you’ve got there’s a lot of interesting things here Arnold Palmer when he played Uno when he was a kid basically Jack Nicholas snam sneed’s 7s Master bag signed the uh Augusta National signed uh by all the tour Pros is that President Gerald Ford Gerald Ford’s clubs and is that pain Stewart back there that’s pain stewards bag here’s the penfold man oh yeah I love that guy this was Sam sneeds Yep they’re all Sam sne hats made exclusively for Sam sne that’s what they are sweet now we got Hickory you got some of the finest Hickory known to man there this a rake iron right here there’s there’s rake yeah there’s Browns rake irons oh man there a bunch of them yeah there’s a made to hit out of the water right right correct yeah there you can hit out a lot of stuff what it is is you you didn’t get drag on it so the stuff passed right through it it’s one of the best looking clubs ever made my God giant nibl if here if you can’t hit the ball with this you got to go get a different game look at that you know this gives you a complete tour of golf of the history all all the evolution this would have made like 1915 when they were just doing all the experimenting trying all the different patent clubs yeah these after long noos came out basically about 1905 and there’s some older ones in that out there though wow here take a look at this I’m my guess Sam snez jumbo driver look at the size of that thing this is like a modern driver yeah he he was ahead of his time we got something for everybody body let I forget Tiger Woods Tiger Woods we got Tiger Woods with tiger [Music] irons that’s the presidential seal that’s Eisenhower’s clubs and the head cover say Augusta National yep yep they Augusta they’re TI they’re again they’re this is this is when he played at Augusta oh my gosh but this is uh well he was a member there I’m not mistaken you got Jackie Gleason’s clubs back here Sydney Pier’s clubs back here the caddy bibs back here for Palmer Sinatra Nicholas and Garett player there was probably your most famous force them ever 50th Anniversary they made two sets of these ever Wilson this was given to Sam Sneed by mandrella the chief designer from Wilson they’re goldplated my favorite piece is probably a ping putter probably the answer X that has no hosle uh there’s just so many good ones but if I sat here I could probably rattle off another 30 or 40 this this is a mindblower here okay this is the rarest pink putter ever made okay this is what’s called the answer X if you’ll notice the Scots they’ll answer it has no hosle they believe that two or three of these were made that’s it I was fortunate that I got these from Carson’s childhood friend and he was able that’s how he got a lot of this pink stuff he got it and this could be this thing’s brand new and there this is possibly the only one known in existence right now this is a this is a club that I’ve read about in books but I’ve never seen this is the club that’s in the books the moon balls this is the balls that uh what wasen Sheard yeah that Shephard hit on the on the moon the first ship the guy that ever walked on the moon you know those two balls are still on the moon yeah isn’t that kind of wild yeah they’re they’re still they’re brand new they’ve never been out of the box I see a ton of Scotty Cameron putters a lot of Scotty camons this is when Scotty was totally on his own the workmanship on these title mass produced these things were basically I mean he these things were made one at a time oh there’s the Augusta winner the Augusta winner is where the fortune and the title is that’s an original Cameron that’s the original one when Bernard longer won the Masters put Scotty Cameron on the map that’s it changed his life you know if a guy wants like I said this is all going to you know when you do your thing put it in the auction I said but guy wants you here’s your chance you want the best here’s your chance absolutely this is a lifetime of collecting here so Bill told me ahead of time that he had 5,000 gold golf clubs first of all I think it’s more than that but that’s not all he has he has golf balls and books and artwork advertising figures the collection is massive the scope of it is something like I’ve never seen my first impression was disbelief uh I think everyone that walks into this room says holy uh in a typical auction of ours we might sell a couple dozen rare golf clubs at that rate it would this collection would take a 100 years to sell somehow I feel I fulfilled you know what my journey was and the only thing I hope like all collectors hope is it winds up in a good collection that’s all I hope that winds up in a collection somebody cherished it as much as I have and it just there’s just so much stuff here it just was time to move on the collection in total is probably somewhere between $2 and $3 million and if I started adding it all up which one day I’m going to it’s it’s uh it would probably scare me so there’s one piece in the entire collection that really got my heart racing and that was President Eisenhower’s clubs these are clubs actually made for Eisenhower and used by Eisenhower and they even have Augusta National head covers on them so the most valuable piece in this entire collection has got to be Dwight Eisenhower’s clubs it’s worth tens of thousands of dollars I mean Dwight Eisenhower’s personal clubs the the the head covers Augustin National Golf Club where Ike was a member of course built the Eisenhower cabin for him these are his personal clubs just even the bag the bag is it’s all handmade leather yeah this is one of the most valuable sets of golf clubs will ever offer this collection is a little special where it has clubs that are worth $10 and over $10,000 so a lot of the journey a lot of the exploration is going through everything and picking out those gems the ones that are fit for an auction the ones that collectors are going to be excited to see and it has the old antiques that everyone’s looking for the old Tom Morris era and it also has modern Scotty Cameron and everything in between so it’s exactly what collectors are looking for in this market so this is some of the stuff that collectors are going to geek out about the most early Scotty Cameron putters prototypes before Scotty Cameron ever signed with Titleist you know worth minimum a couple thousand to a few thousand do each you don’t even see these head covers ever how does Bill have this many I mean the Wilson 8802 is three dozen of them so this one I missed the first time around I thought it was just a replica Tiger Woods bag it’s from when Buick was his sponsor and had it on the bag but it’s autographed by Tiger I mean Tiger Wood stuff is just the most desirable right now tiger is becoming his own collecting category it’s it’s absolutely insane tiger and his inner circle hold on to the most of the really good stuff it’s pretty insane to find an actual Buick bag of his nice huge autograph of tiger yeah I mean this is exactly what collector’s looking for just get rid of this Sam sne caddy bib so Bill just kind of glossed over this one this is a Longnose Club looks like a putter made by Hugh philp the greatest Club maker in history this club dates to the 1840s it’s it’s an absolute work of art it’s it’s poetry it’s I mean you could use it right now we see a lot of sets of clubs even ones made for Jack Nicholas but not used by him this one this is the famous McGregor response massive just comically huge it doesn’t even make sense how big it is I think one of the coolest things is going to be trying to explain this collection to my friends back at home it’s insane how large this is the scope of it the scale of it uh walking through it you could spend hours and hours if not days looking at everything I feel like I’ve been here for a few hours and I haven’t seen 10% of what he actually has the craziest part of this collection is we can’t cherry-pick it we can’t just take the best pieces Bill wants it all gone he wants to take all of it we don’t know if it’s going to fit in a semi-trailer that’s how much stuff is here logistically this is going to be a nightmare but that’s also kind of the fun part uh this is going to take a ton of movers it’s going to take them days to do uh the number of golf bags here there’s hundreds of golf bags all filled with golf clubs thousands of golf clubs and we’ve got to careful with them we’re talking about some incredibly valuable item that bill spent millions of dollars on and we got to get it back safely to our warehouse somehow so it’s going to be a huge challenge challenge we’ve never done before but we’re going to we’re going to do our best we just got to make sure we care about the items and take care of them first probably won’t spend a lot of time in here anymore but yeah I miss there’s a lot of good memories in here you know a lot of friends of mine here this was a great room to sit and talk about golf you get golf Enthusiast and I had a lot of you know I still have a lot of friends are golf enthusiasts everybody’s going to be really sad you know that this stuff is gone you know eventually I want to build another house and and to move this collection to another house would be mindboggling so I figured you know it’s time but yeah there’s a lot of good memories in this room believe me this whole collection it it was it was a heck of a journey hey the only thing I would tell him is like a lot of time and work to to collect this stuff and you know I I just hope they’re just as happy with it as I’ve been all you know for all these years and you know becomes a part of you you know like I said it was it was it’s a long it’s been a long journey let’s put it that way but I feel like I’ve achieved something and hopefully like I said it goes out if I go down with this collection sell it as you know biggest collection in the world at least I said I’ve done it I’ve done it right we good good oh you know we didn’t get we didn’t get that picture but that’s all right [Music]