A piece of wood left in an umbrella stand for years has been found to be one of the most important sporting artifacts in the world.
It’s poised to sell at Sotheby’s — and could fetch millions.
After purchasing his grandmother’s home in Northfield, Vermont, in 1980, Anthony Bean discovered a 43-inch long wooden stick with a curve at the bottom in the back of a closet. Not knowing much about it, he gave it to his sister, Germaine, and her husband, Gary Morse, rather than throwing it away.
The unsuspecting stick would sit in the Morse’s umbrella stand for decades.
“We just stuck it in there and forgot about it, really,” Germaine told WBUR in 2020.
Around 2015, Germaine saw something online about the “Rutherford Stick.” That stick was believed to have been fashioned in the 1850s by Alexander Rutherford out of a piece of rock elm from his farm, and it sold for a whopping $2.2 million in 2006.
“The first thing we did was took it out of the umbrella stand,” Gary recalled to WBUR. “We were just holding our breath and keeping it quiet as long as we could, 'cause we didn't want anybody to know it was here,” Germain said during the same interview.
The couple then brought the stick to Bill Fitsell from the International Hockey Hall of Fame, who wrote his findings in a letter to Gary:
“I have measured, traced, photographed and admired The Morse Stick on two occasions and compared it to other vintage stick. I find it to be a unique and most interesting artifact that fills the void in 19th century hockey history between shinny, ice polo and ice hockey and would be a valuable acquisition for any series hockey collector or museum curator.”
The “Morse stick,” once an afterthought left in an umbrella stand, was one of the oldest hockey sticks in the world, believed to date back to the end of the 19th century, around the time of the first game of modern ice hockey recognized by the International Ice Hockey Federation on March 3, 1875.
Though the Morses are not sure where the stick originally came from, additional research provided by Sotheby’s found the owner’s grandfather, who was born in 1884 in St. Alphonse, Quebec. He would have come of age “in the heart of ice hockey’s development in and spread from the province of Quebec to the northeastern United States and beyond as well as the development, spread, and eventual decline of ice polo in U.S. mainstream sporting culture as well as the most likely date range of this stick.”
After the initial discovery, the Morses had the stick appraised: $3.5 million.
The Morses attempted to sell the stick at Goldin in 2020, but the sale did not go through. This time, the auction has no reserve at Sotheby’s.
“From a folk game played by schoolchildren, First Nations, and the Prince of Wales to a national pastime whose leading scorer in the world’s best league, based in North America, comes from Russia, this stick has borne witness to well over a century of global sporting history,” reads the auction house’s lot description.
Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct, the premier company for collectible culture.