Used iron sets, or seven single irons

Irons are the most expensive thing in the bag and the most awkward to buy used, because you are buying seven clubs that need to match. The obvious dodge is to build the set one club at a time from single listings, which are cheap and plentiful. We track both, so we can price the dodge.

A used set of 71,250 sets listed £550.00

7 single irons3,839 singles listed £531.93

Assembling is the more expensive option, by 3%. The single listings are individually cheap and collectively dearer, which is the standard shape of a market where the awkward part is priced in.

Why the singles are not the bargain they look

The single-iron market is mostly replacements. Somebody has snapped a 7 iron and needs exactly that club, and the price reflects that they have no alternative. The cheap singles are the ends of the set, the 3 and the 4 iron that most people no longer carry, and those are cheap because nobody wants them, not because they are underpriced.

The other thing working against the assembly plan is that iron sets have one of the widest price spreads we measure: the dearest live listing of a given set is typically 2.04 times the cheapest. The money is in shopping the set properly, not in avoiding it.

What to actually check

Two things, and neither is the price. Which clubs are in it, because "7 piece" can mean 4 to PW or 5 to GW and those are different purchases. And whether the shafts match, because a set that has had one club replaced with the same model in a different flex is a set of six and a spare.

Every iron and iron set we track, priced separately.