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The $50 Thrift Store Golf Challenge Part Deux

 Last winter, I set out on a journey - a budget of $50 to assemble a complete, useable set of golf clubs.  My rules were as follows:

  1. Total budget of $50 for everything (including clubs, bag, balls, and tees)
  2. A standard, USGA-conforming set...that is, a maximum of 14 clubs
  3. All clubs must be in USGA compliance - no mega-sized drivers or "illegal'' wedges
  4. The irons must be a complete set - wedges and woods can be piecemeal
For the 2022 season, I've added a little hitch:  The set must be period correct from the mid 1990s.  My earliest golf memories were playing at the now-defunct Rolling Hills Golf Course in Hudsonville, MI in 1996, 1997, and 1998, so Part Deux of the $50 Thrift Store Golf Challenge is my attempt to pay homage to those early days.  As such, I've been using a lot of information from Golfclubspec.com, the PGA Value Guide, and 2nd Swing to nail down production dates of clubs.  

All that being said, I've got the foundations of a set already started:



Hogan Edge irons - not the forged ones that debuted in 1989, but the GCD set that debuted in 1994.  I found a 2i through PW set (with bag) for $16.

Not pictured, and I'm trying to find a date on these, but I've also found a Callaway Big Bertha Steelhead driver and 3 wood, which seem to date from 1998.  Those were a set for $3.

There's also an Adams Tight Lies Air Assault GT 5 wood, which based on looking up the patent numbers on the US Patent Office website, seem to place this club between 1994 and 1997.  This was purchased individually for $2.

As of this writing, I have a putter (Titleist Bullseye, from sometime between the 1950s and the 1970s), and a series of wedges (the earliest from the 1980s, and the rest from the 2000s and later).  The spirit of this experiment, as mentioned above, is to celebrate my earliest exposures to golf, and to expand on the previous $5 Thrift Store Challenge by looking for specific bits of gear that meant something to me in those early years.  

On the one hand, I have a complete set of clubs if you include the putter and wedges in the paragraph above.  On the other hand, they don't have that sentimental draw that the Hogan irons and the Callaway woods do.  I'll be keeping an eye out - I've got a few new gems; some thrift stores that have a wonderful selection of golf clubs, here in Tulip City.

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