I Had a Set of Those
When and why I owned every set of Hogan Irons
“I had a set of those.”
That is what I will eventually say when, during the conversation about the golf clubs we played when we were younger, or that our parents or grandparents gave us, the conversation inevitably turns to the Ben Hogan Golf Company.
It does not matter which set they are discussing. Apex, Apex PC, PowerThrust, Bounce Sole, Bounce Sole 1+, Bounce Sole 1+ with aluminum Shafts, Edge, Edge GS. I had a set. Precisions, PC6, Radials, “Red Lines”, Channel-backs, Magnums, Medallions, Directors, “Black Cameos”, “White Cameos”. I had a set. Not to mention Sure-Outs, Speed Slots, and Equalizers.
In fact, I had all of these sets at one time in my garage. It was one of the most enchanted and exhausting experiences of my life. Here is how it happened.
I have always loved Ben Hogan stuff. I have read as many biographies as I could get my hands on. For my mom, my name came from the Bible, but it was more Hogan than Hebrew1 names on his mind when my dad agreed to the name. My dad claimed that during his own childhood in Fort Worth, he remembered seeing Mr. Hogan through the fence, out on the course in the evening hitting balls. I would like to believe him, but sometimes I remember seeing the same thing and it would have been 25 years before I was even born. But that is the kind of thing that happens when you are drawn in by The Hogan Mystique. It makes you feel like you can remember sometime in your past, seeing him hitting balls in the dusk through the fence or the bushes at Colonial or Shady Oaks, you can make out his profile by the hat, but the swing is the unmistakable sign that it is him, and as the sun sets you can still know its him simply by the sound of the strike. See what I mean? To be fair to my dad, the provenance actually checks out for him.
There was a used sporting goods store where I lived that would regularly have sets of Hogan blades for sale for less than $100. Often way less. The problem (their problem) was that they based their prices on ebay “sold item” prices. They did not know the difference between Radial IIs and Apex 1973. But I knew, and what I didn’t know I started to learn. On a few occasions I picked up a set of the rack on my way to work, dropped them in the industrial sink in the church fellowship hall kitchen, wiped them clean at lunch, put them online for sale and dropped them at the post office on my way home from work that same day. Selling them for up to 5 times what I paid for them.
That however is not how I accumulated these sets. Once, as I was preparing to ship a putter to an ebay buyer, I noticed that he lived just a little over an hour from me. When I shipped it, I messaged him, “Are you a collector, or just interested in this one putter?” This began our friendship. From then on, any time that I would see a set or even a single iron in a goodwill or a garage sale, I would call or text John to see if he wanted it. He usually did.
John started out simply trying to collect a full set of the original Precision Irons, the first set made by Hogan’s own company. John’s mother had given him a set when he was young. He (or someone) loaned the clubs to his cousin at some point, and the cousin did what cousins sometimes do. John never saw them again. He did not play golf anymore, he just wanted to have that set back in his hands. In his pursuit, I think he began to feel the burden of each of these orphan clubs. Maybe he felt like they had all been heartlessly shuffled through cousin’s closets and garages everywhere.
I will save the details for another time. Maybe this will be a part of my book someday. But after years of filling his humble apartment with custom built racks of clubs including 4 full sets of Precisions, John was ready to get rid of them all at once. He did not want his kids to have to deal with them some day. I found a willing financial partner and bought them from John for probably half of what he had in them. It was the best I could do. I made much of the money back on the first day sending several sets of Precisions to a man in California who has such an encyclopedic familiarity with Hogan clubs that he could cite me information on serial numbers, hosel lengths, paint fill, shaft bands that you literally cannot find on the internet, and if you can, it is very likely because someone already asked him and then posted it there.
I placed these sets in their new homes as quickly and as efficiently as I could. Once we broke even, I stopped most of my bookkeeping. If someone was willing to contact me and send me a token amount of money, I would box up these ferruled foundlings and mailed them off, entrusting them to what I hoped would be worthy guardians. I finally emptied my garage for pennies on the dollar when a school teacher from Georgia showed up with a handful of cash and a U-haul, willing to keep the dream alive.
It has been a long week and a strange season, but I in order to keep my streak alive, posting every Mondays since my 45th birthday, I submit to you the rough and short version of my adventure in collecting and selling Hogan Clubs. I am over half-way to my goal of 52 straight weeks of writing and posting *something*. Thanks for reading this far.
Benjamin is Hebrew for “son of my right hand” or “favored son” and was the name of Jacob’s (aka Israel’s) 12th son. Hogan’s name was actually William Ben Hogan (no Benjamin involved). I love the name Ben but his siblings were named Royal and Princess, so… I don’t know who the favored child of that family was… but Royal, Princess, and Ben… ?