I found this vintage Wilson Blue Ridge Solid State golf ball last week on the thirteenth hole of my course. It was in the first cut, just off the fairway and sitting high, as though it had just left the face of someone’s driver. The Blue Ridge was clean, too — I didn’t wipe it at all for the picture.
I would love to know when this ball was manufactured. A Google search turned up several photos, but no dates.
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My neighbor gave me a couple boxes of unused golf balls from when he started playing a few years ago.
Two things were strange to me (at 47) – one of the boxes was a dozen individually wrapped Bruce Devlin Spalding balls, and the box was more of display case instead of just a regular dozen. The wrapping of the balls was a blue cellophane and it was coming apart. I opened one, and the ball was cracked and disintegrating.
The second was box of Wilson, and it had an art deco style packaging. The balls looked shiny new, and I was shocked that it had a logo on the ball for an electric company saying call before you dig, and the number had a word prefix on it.
Couldn’t date the Bruce Devlin ball, but he was a big deal around 1960, so maybe 1965? The Wilson was about the same time I think, as the prefix phone numbers started being eliminated in the early 60s, so 1963-65 seemed the right time. I was really surprised by the logo though, it was sharp and crisp, multi-colored, with very fine writing for the phone number. Surprised at the quality and resolution of the ancient logo printing.
I think the Blue Ridge brand may date to when Sam Snead was a “thing.” So maybe the sixties.
Nothing like an almost three-year delay in responding…
My cousin gave me a sleeve of never used Wilson Blue Ridge balls, and I also wondered when they were made. These are not the spiffy “Solid State” variety, these are plain “Blue Ridge”. The address on the box is “Wilson Sporting Goods Co., 2223 West St, River Grove, Ill. 60171.
Zip codes were broadly used in the USA as of July, 1963, per the USPO site. So they were made later than then…
Three letter state abbreviations were replaced by two letter state abbreviations in October, 1963.
That would put the packaging / sale date approximately between July, 1963 and December, 1963 (Giving them a couple of months to adopt the new standard)
Short answer: Latter half of 1963