Most early balls, featheries and gutties, came just as you found them, unwrapped and either individually purchased or perhaps by twos and threes from the maker. When golf began to really boom in the late 1800s, golf ball makers ramped up their efforts and began to wrap balls in either paper or colored cellophane. Cigar-box-sized boxes soon came along to hold a dozen balls, often still individually wrapped. During the first two dozen years or so of the 20th century such boxes were available in a bewildering variety of colorful graphics. Such boxes today, even empty, can fetch between $40 and $500 or $600 or more. And if any of the original balls are still in there, so much the better.