170-Year-Old Hockey Stick Valued at $3.5M to Be Sold at Auction

A hockey stick that may be the oldest existing piece of its kind is up for auction on the Goldin Auctions website.

According to the stick's description, it is believed to have been made some time between the 1850s and 1870s. The stick has also been appraised at a price of $3.5 million after a stick from the 1850s known as the Rutherford Stick sold for $2.2 million in 2018.

The stick has been dubbed the Morse Stick since it is owned by Gary and Germaine Morse. Anthony Bean (Germaine's brother) found the stick after purchasing his grandmother's house in Northfield, Vermont, in 1980, and it was later gifted to Gary and Germaine.

Per Goldin Auctions, the first recorded hockey game was played in Montreal in 1875, but the Morse Stick could be as many as 25 years older than that.

As early as 1845, it was reportedly known that a form of hockey called "hawkey" was being played in the New England area of the United States.

International Hockey Hall of Fame Board of Directors member J.W. "Bill" Fitsell said he examined the 19th-century stick twice and expressed a desire for it to one day be displayed at the Hall of Fame.

The stick is up on Goldin Auctions at a starting bid of $100,000, with the auction ending May 16.