The Masters “Green Jacket” is one of the most coveted prizes in all of golf. It’s awarded to the winner of the PGA Masters tournament at the end of the weekend in a special televised ceremony. So how did a Masters jacket wind up in a thrift store? The story begins in 1994, when it was found hanging among the blazers at a Toronto Goodwill. Its price tag was a mere $5. Only one Canadian has ever won the PGA Masters tournament, and that was Mike Weir in 2003. Although the Augusta National Golf Club confirmed the green jacket’s authenticity in 1994, there’s no clue as to whom it once belonged. According to Ryan Carey, whose auction house, Carey Auction House, sold the jacket for $139,000 in 2017, the name tag had been cut out of the jacket when it arrived at Goodwill. He questioned why the name tag had been removed. “Those things don’t seem to go hand-in-hand, because if someone didn’t know what it was, you wouldn’t think they would take the time to cut the name out.” While Carey said the odds favor the jacket belonging to a member, there are a few Masters champions who are missing theirs, and there are others who had several jackets made throughout their lifetime to accommodate changes in weight. Now, only the current Masters champion can wear a green jacket in public. The Augusta National members and previous winners are forbidden from taking their jackets off the club's grounds. All of the jackets of that era were tailor-made in Augusta at Cullum's men's shop, so Carey acknowledged that it's possible there could be a ledger, somewhere, that contains the exact measurement of the thrift store green jacket by which someone could identify its owner. For now, the mystery of the green jacket remains unsolved.
