When Robert Hanley died last spring, he left behind a 14-year-old pickup, a modest amount of savings and a Scotty Cameron putter his family assumed was worth considerably less than either.

Hanley had bought the putter for $20 at a garage sale nearly 30 years earlier.

“He was a terrible putter,” said his son, Mark. “He bought anything he thought might help.”

It didn't.

(Here we need to talk about how bad Hanley's putting was...the He was a really bad putter. Oh yeah. How bad was he? type of joke.  Hanley continued using the putter for most of his life, routinely missing short putts and occasionally threatening to replace it. He never did.

After his death, Mark was going through his father's golf clubs when he noticed several unusual markings on the putter and took it to a collector.

The putter, an extremely rare early Scotty Cameron model, was subsequently appraised at $48,000.

The discovery has created an unexpected dilemma for the Hanley family.

Hanley's widow, Carol, lives in a small manufactured home outside Ocala and was left with little beyond Social Security and her husband's modest estate. Their daughter, Susan, believes the putter should be sold.

Mark wants to keep it.

“It was Dad's,” he said. “I know he would want me to have it.”

Susan doesn't agree.

“Mark can't putt worth a shit either,"

Carol has yet to decide.

For now, the putter remains in the same worn golf bag where Hanley kept it for nearly three decades, alongside several clubs of considerably less value and approximately 40 golf balls he apparently found and intended someday to use.

Mark said his father would have been stunned to learn what the putter was worth.

“He'd probably say he knew it was special,” he said.

Then he paused.

“And then he'd ask why he couldn't make anything with it.”