Finally. 

In our 17 years, we've sold some of the rarest pieces of golf memorabilia, and hold nearly all meaningful auction records in the golf collecting world. 

But there's one significant piece that's always eluded us  - The Goff. 

The Goff: An Heroi-Comical Poem. in Three Cantos by Thomas Mathison is the very first book dedicated to the game of golf. Three editions of The Goff were published in the 1700s, and a scant few examples still exist today. The second-ever book on the game of golf (The Rules of the Thistle Golf Club) was not published until 1824. As the only book on golf published in the 1700s, famed book collector Joseph Murdoch once described The Goff as "standing alone in a century of silence." 

The poem humorously depicts a game of golf played on Leith Links and provides significant insights into how golf was played at that time, including details on the equipment used and the layout of the course. It also mentions prominent golfers of the era, referred to as the 'Caledonian Chiefs,' who were regulars at Leith Links. These players, drawn from Edinburgh's professional elite, were the founding members of the first golf club, the Company of Gentlemen Golfers, now-known as The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers.

Current scholarship suggests that this 1793 third edition, famously misidentified on the title-page as the second edition, is actually scarcer than the first edition. Of the 3 editions of The Goff, it also contains the most text about the game of golf.  There are nine copies of the first edition listed in OCLC/WorldCat, and only two of the third edition, both in Scottish institutions (Edinburgh University Library and the National Library of Scotland). The USGA gives a slightly different census, listing ten copies of the 1743 1st edition, three copies of the 1763 2nd edition, and two copies of the 1793 3rd edition. A substantial majority of the known copies are owned by institutions, and only a scant few in private collections. 

In the world of golf collecting, this is one of those pieces that transcends all collecting niches. Whether you are a book collector or not, this will be the centerpiece of whatever collection it will find itself in.

Condition: Blue half calf cover with rubbing to extremities, marbled endpapers with the ex libris label for Samuel Chick (a copy of William Faques the first printer to the king, 1504) and booksellers label for Henry Sotheran & Co to front pastedown, some light staining to the head of the title page, pp.32 runs true, pp.22, 23 and 25 previously dog eared, a very good copy, scarce, Printed for Peter Hill, Edinburgh, 1793.