Offered here is a mint condition Vardon Flyer golf ball. The Vardon Flyer is one of the most important golf balls even produced. It was introduced in 1899 with great fanfare, as it was an improvement over other gutta percha balls of the day, and it was backed by the greatest golfer in the world, Harry Vardon. By all accounts, the ball was impressive. But it suffered from a major issue of timing, as the rubber wound ball was soon released and essentially made the Vardon Flyer obsolete overnight.

Though the Vardon Flyer was somewhat of a failure, it is nonetheless considered one of the cornerstone golf balls required for any serious collection. If you look at past auction results, you'll see that even poor condition examples fetch almost $2,000 at auction. But a mint example? Well, we sold one in the Spring of 2016 for a record $6,900.

This original Vardon Flyer golf ball is near mint, except for some light pink spots from the original wrapper and a couple spots of missing paint. Though we can't be too upset about that wrapper, as it's also the very reason why we have such a pristine example today. The pink wrapper marks can no doubt be removed, but we have made no attempt to do so. It will likely be quite some time before another Vardon Flyer in such a high grade is ever encountered again. Only a couple of small areas of the original paint is missing.