Lyons Leadership

Good golf equipment can be cheap if you know where to look. I can’t count how many times I’ve gone to yard sales in the summer in my neighborhood and to find an entire set of clubs for $20. Granted, I’m almost certain they weren’t top of the line stuff, but they were suitable for how I play.

I would much rather put a couple hundred bucks in golf lessons from a professional golfer than to plop down $1200 or more for a set of clubs I may or may not use a lot.Yard sales, garage sales, auctions, and second hand stores will all have sets of golf clubs discounted. So yard and garage sales are the first place I’d look.

Next, I would scour the largest online auction site in the world,bay.com. Ebay has a great business model and a great reputation. You can find really good bargains if you know how to look. You need a little patience on Ebay because the deals may not end for five or six days from when you first start looking. At this writing, there were over 2800 golf club sets for auction. There were 11,900 golf ball sites offering their golf balls. Believe it or not, there was even a “reconditioned golf ball” category. Go search around on Ebay and you are sure to find great deals.

Amazon.com is another quality and reputable site for finding golf clubs at an affordable price. Many may be upgrading their set so they want to offload their clubs and make some money in the process. You have to search for the deals, but you can still find them.

One minor disadvantage to the online sites is that you don’t get to play with the clubs before you buy. Unfortunately you don’t always know for certain what you’re getting. The advantage though is that most major online sites have modest return policies (with plenty of cautions before you actually press Buy).

Finally, online golf sites (not Yahoo-, Ebay- or Amazon-related) are the last place I would turn to in order to find great reconditioned golf equipment. These sites are geared towards golf. Buying from these sites is an area that you need to be cautious about.

You can buy decent equipment at affordable prices but you need to exercise a bit of caution. It’s fine to be cautiously skeptical about your buys. P.T. Barnum said it best: “there’s a sucker born every minute.” And he hadn’t even heard about the online world. Unfortunately, he’s right. You now know that not everyone you deal with online is as honest and trustworthy as you and me. Do some due diligence and read the reviews of the person you are buying from. If he (or she) has a ton of positive reviews, you increase your odds of success. Chances are very good that your purchase will also be very good. Avoid those who have very few buy and/or sell transactions. It doesn’t make the person untrustworthy, it just makes her inexperienced.