Golf balls can be insanely expensive. $40-$50-$60+ per DOZEN? $5.00 per ball? Damn. At that price I could lose $50 in golf balls on the first 4-5 holes on my tight, hazard-ridden home course if I don’t hit it well. That’s why I had to institute a “3-premium-ball lost limit” there. That’s a blog post for another day.
When I used to live next to the 1st tee on my home course I could sneak onto the course after hours and find literally hundreds of balls. I knew all the places to look because, well, I hit them there. Now I don’t have that luxury since moving a little farther away from the course.
There’s nothing better than finding a nice Titleist ProV1, or Bridgestone B330, or TaylorMade tour ball in the bushes. It’s like found money. No golfer other than perhaps PGA Tour pros is above playing that newly found ProV1 either. Hand raised.
So if a person is more than willing to play that pre-owned ball in the bushes, a look at LostGolfBalls.com is probably a good financial decision. LostGolfBalls.com has every model golf ball a golfer would ever want, slightly used, for a fraction of retail.
LostGolfBalls.com Golf Balls
Quality Levels
LostGolfBalls.com offers several “levels” of used golf balls.
Refinished golf balls are balls that have been reconditioned at a factory that actually makes new golf balls. This is as close to a new golf ball as one can get without it actually being new.
AAAAA/1st Quality golf balls are mint used balls, not reconditioned. One may not be able to tell the difference between this and a new ball.
AAAA/2nd Quality golf balls are still in very good condition and may appear to have a little wear, similar to a ball that has been played for a few holes.
AAA/3rd Quality golf balls are still very playable but may have some smudges, scuffs, and blemishes.
Pricing
Pricing for the different levels of balls is proportionate to their quality level. I chose to go with a couple of boxes of my current gamer ball, the Bridgestone B330 or B330-S. Let’s do some comparing.
On Bridgestone’s website a brand new box of B330’s costs $44.99, plus shipping.
The highest quality AAAAA/1st Quality B330 from LostGolfBalls.com’s website is listed at $23.99, about HALF of retail. For a golf ball that performs the same, the golfer can literally be paying around half the money. Great deal.
The next level ball is the AAAA/2nd Quality. These balls are priced at $15.99 per dozen.
Finally, there are refinished B330’s available for $12.99.
Conclusion
As a decent amateur golfer with a low single digit handicap, I see no difference in playability or performance between the AAAAA/1st Quality balls, and a brand new B330 I’ve played for a few holes. Well, there is a difference actually. It’s in my wallet.
“Can you pick up a 12 year supply of toilet paper, a 2,400 pack of tampons, a giant bottle of Kalamata olives, a 55-inch flat screen TV, a 9,000 foot roll of aluminum foil, and a couple dozen urethane covered 4-piece golf balls for me when you are at Costco?”
This is hilarious.
But if you look at the specs the ball should perform just as good as a Titleist ProV1. It has almost the exact same compression and spin rates, four layers, urethane cover. It’s a tour ball. LOL. What’s better, is in standard Costco fashion, TWO dozen of their golf balls costs lest than one dozen ProV1’s! Who’s going to be the first tour player to sign an endorsement deal?
Yesterday I put some new golf balls into play for testing, the Snell Golf “My Tour Ball” or MTB. Who is Snell? Snell is the name of the company’s founder, Dean Snell. Dean is a former TaylorMade Vice President of R&D for golf balls, and co-inventor of the Titelist ProV1.
The MTB is a “tour” caliber ball. This means it has a qualities a professional tour golfer would want, such as high spin, soft cover and so on. The cover is urethane, just like 99% of the other tour balls, like the ProV1.
I have to log many more rounds before I’m ready for my full review, but here’s a short commentary after one full 18 hole round. I loved the feel of the ball and found it to respond well when I put a good swing on it. Unfortunately in yesterday’s round the good swings were not that often. I found the ball to feel great around the greens and with the putter. I especially loved the feel hitting bump and run shots with anything between a 7-9 iron.
Below is a photo of two Snell MTB balls. One is the ball I played 18 holes with and one is brand new, never played. Can you tell which is which?
One ball is new, one has been played 18 holes. Can you tell which is which?
Based on yesterday’s round and the photo above, these are very durable for “tour” balls. Tour balls aren’t typically durable.
Sometimes it can be hard to identify your balls. It’s especially bad to get your balls mixed up with someone else’s. To avoid problems like that I’m testing out a new ball stamper from StampYourBalls.com. Check it out.
On the first tee I stamped my ball with a scottish flag – lovely
Since I love Scotland so much I chose the Scottish flag as one of my stamps. I have a few others which are quite entertaining. Watch for those soon. There are currently 130 designs to choose from.
The stamp is easy to use and the imprint is very crisp on the ball. I was quite surprised. Of course the big question is how long will the imprint last. Below is a shot of the same ball after the round. The photo is a bit washed out by the sun so it looks like more of the ink came off than really did. And yes, I played the whole round with one ball.
A little bit of the ink is worn off, but quite impressive after a full round
I’ll do some more testing of all the stamps in various colors, and post my full review soon. On first impressions this is a fun product which will help keep my balls properly accounted for.
This winter has been killing me with regards to getting to product reviews. The courses are closed, buried in as much as couple of feet of snow. The high temperature for about the last month has been below freezing. Spring can’t come soon enough.
Last month I received an amazing promotional box from Bridgestone Golf. I knew no matter what was inside I’d dig it. As it turns out inside was a sample of each of their new B330 golf ball series, the B330, B330-S, B330RX, and B330RX-S. I would have posted these pics earlier, but there was an “embargo” on. That meant I had to wait for a certain date.
During the waiting the box became buried in a bunch of other products which came in for review. I finally got the chance to open it up today and take some pictures.
I do plan to review all of these balls after the snow melts. I’ll need to get my hands on more than one sleeve of each model though. I could lose a sleeve on the first hole of my home course, before I even get off the tee box.
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