Anybody Collect Skateboard Decks?

stanforddude

I haven't posted in ages, but I've been enjoying reading the thoughtful discussions on this forum.

I'm curious if anyone else on here collects old skateboard decks from the 70s thru 90s. I stumbled upon the hobby a few years ago after noticing some old skateboard decks on Ebay selling for big dollars. Seeing these images hit me with a wave of nostalgia and I soon found myself surfing through www.artofskateboarding.com and joining the highly entertaining www.skullandbonesskateboards.com/forums. Much of my card collecting budget has now found its way over to my skate deck budget.

Anyways, I'm fascinated by the beauty and rarity of these sports collectibles/art pieces. The condition aspect of the hobby very much reminds me of vintage cards. Just as kids were more likely to put a Mantle RC in their bike spokes, skateboards were built to be ridden and therefore very few unused mint condition specimens exist.

My all time favorite:



Am I the only skateboard collector on this forum?

YogiBerraFan

Not a collector but accumulator. I ran a skateboard shop for a while. I accumulated at least 200 promotional or limited edition decks while traveling for the company I worked for. Every convention or competition would have reps from various companies giving away all kinds of stuff to shop owners & managers. I was given decks, trucks, wheels, stickers, shirts, you name it. Almost everything I have is from the 90s. One day I will have to clean all of my crap out of my parents house. Well, maybe not. If I ever do at this point my mother will probably have a heart attack from the shock

DetroitSquirreL

I skated in the early mid 80s...

1966CUDA

I had a few but have gotten rid of most all of it over time. I rode in the late 70's when you had to buy everything out of a catalog...finally in '79 a skate shop opened up where I lived but then I was almost out of it. I have a set of old ACS-500 trucks somewhere and also have one skateboard left with Gullwing trucks and Bones wheels....put it together way back then thru the mail piece by piece.

stanforddude

YogiBerraFan, I'd suggest you check out what you've got in the stash. Many high value decks from the early 90s worth well beyond $2000 in unskated condition...like this Jason Lee deck and many others:



You might be sitting on a goldmine - I'm dying to know what you've got!

TNP777

I still have this deck (well, not the one in this picture, but one just like it):



I used to ride one of these until my son left it in the driveway and my wife crunched it:



Since that deck was discontinued, I replaced it with one of these:



I don't ride it much anymore, though. As I've gotten older I've gotten way more timid. I've found that I'm sorta scared to break something.

Dboneesq

HAHA ... here is what I rode when I was a kid!






And just in case you were curious, this is what my roller skates looked like:
Listen here

Hallco

The P/P Skull & Dagger was my first board in 1985!!! Mine was the royal blue with Tracker Trucks and those hugely thick Bones wheels! I also had a couple of Lesters and my last was a Christian Hosoi deck. I am 43 years old and I think sk8ting is THE thing I miss most about my teen years. More proof that I am going through a mid life crisis I guess! Thnks fr th Mmrs!!

stanforddude

TNP777, you have good taste with the Lance Mountain Future Primitive deck - a very highly regarded graphic. That graphic went through a series of iterations, with the early wheel-welled versions commanding huge dollars.

Dboneesq - you're seriously dating yourself, man!

Hallco, you've got fine taste my friend!

Mapleleaf

I still have my skate boards from the mid 80's. They aren't mint though.
Neither was I after some of the wipeouts.

3stars

If anyone can find me a Vision Punkskulls deck (the original, not the retro redo's) in green - that was my favorite!

jbox

Oh man, I love some of these old decks. I was pretty big into skating from about 1987-1990 right in the middle of the explosion of the Bones Brigade (great documentary out recently on them). I probably skated 8-10 different boards during that time. My very first was a Vision Psycho Stix. Most of my others were various Powell-Peralta boards. I'll try to post some of the boards I had soon. I looked into grabbing a few vintage decks, but never did. I don't really have a place to display them and wasn't interested in just putting them in the closet. Some day, I'll acquire a few.

Dpeck100

My brother got me to watch the Bones Brigade on Netflix and it was awesome. I went to EBAY to check on some of the skateboards and there was some action in the Powell Peralta decks.

I think one of the Tony Hawk decks in a shadow box would be awesome. The one's I saw were around $1500 in unused condition and that seems pretty reasonable to me and a good buy.

I could have sworn I saw some older skateboard cards in the documentary and looked for them a few times on EBAY from the early 80's. I never found them but if you know anything about them post some info.

QUITCRAB

I still have my G&S board, Simms pure juice wheels and ACS 650 trucks. I remember My friend had a dog town board.

EagleEyeKid

Doug, that's probably as close to the Marty McFly deck as you'll get. Those wheels are crazy.

Maurice

<< <i>I could have sworn I saw some older skateboard cards in the documentary and looked for them a few times on EBAY from the early 80's. I never found them but if you know anything about them post some info. >>


I don't know anything about them but are these the cards you saw?

Dpeck100

Maurice those are not them but thank you for checking.

One of the pictures was of Tony Hawk when he was very young.



1978 Stacey Peralta


This is a cool looking card.

Griffins

I got started in photography shooting my friends in Santa Monica and getting a few pictures in Skateboarder in '79. Still have most of my old boards, but wish I had the first one, an original zephyr kicktail. Still have a Model T (Tony Alva's first model), a G & S Stacy Peralta warptail, a Dogtown Skate with original artwork, and a couple of Functional Designs.
Donruss put out a set of AllPro Skateboarders in '78, I've got an unopened box of those. There is a box on ebay now for a BIN of $40.
If you liked the Bones Brigade documentary, you should see Dogtown and the Zboyz, infinitely better but I'm a bit prejudiced

Dboneesq

<< <i>



Doug, that's probably as close to the Marty McFly deck as you'll get. Those wheels are crazy. >>



IIRC, that skateboard sold for $1.99 new. Those metal wheels didn't actually give you the smoothest of rides!

jbox

Agree, the Dogtown doc is outstanding too.

jbox

Since its on topic, here is one of my favorite cards. It's a 1/1.

no1cp

That Sports Illustrated for Kids Tony Hawk card -- I swear I had that issue when I was kid. Odds are my parents probably threw away that magazine years ago.

I skated in the mid 90's. I believe I had a World Industries board. Try as I might, I could never progress my skills. God didn't intend 6'4" white men to have the coordination necessary to do things like flip/kick tricks on a mobile piece of wood. A couple of my friends were really good and fun to watch. Lots of late nights spent in abandoned parking lots at the age of 18. Memories.

miklia

fun thread. thanks for sharing guys!

72skywalker

I had the Vision Gator in the 80's . We used to ride the ramps the one time i was able to get 3 of my four wheel above the rail. That was my biggest thrill at the moment and i felt like a professional. I was also looking through my old VHS tapes and found the movie "Thrashin." My it was bad but aswesome in the day. The only saving grace for it was that the Red Hot Chili Peppers were in it.

scotgreb

I skated for Mid-Atlantic Pepsi in the 70s, as well as a local shop in O.C. MD called Sundance Brotherhood -- later became Sundancer -- not sure if it's still there.

I have none of my original equipment (G&S, Sims, Tracker, Kryptonics, etc.), but I bought a nice modern Alva about 10 years ago when my son went through a skateboard phase -- got back in a half-pipe and it was an awesome feeling.

I stumbled upon the Lords of Dogtown movie a couple years ago -- now one of my favorite "sports" movies.

Griffins -- I'm sure I had every one of those Skateboarder mags in the late 70s -- we couldn't wait for the next issue to hit the local news stand.

Thanks for posting -- lots of great memories for me.

Downtown1974

<< <i>I had the Vision Gator in the 80's . We used to ride the ramps the one time i was able to get 3 of my four wheel above the rail. That was my biggest thrill at the moment and i felt like a professional. I was also looking through my old VHS tapes and found the movie "Thrashin." My it was bad but aswesome in the day. The only saving grace for it was that the Red Hot Chili Peppers were in it. >>



Haha. The Gator brings back memories. I remember being at my friends house working on our boards like they were cars. Changing wheels and trucks in his garage listening to The Ramones. Good stuff!

stanforddude

DPeck100 - I agree on the shadow box idea. This is not my collection, but something I aspire to do in my man cave. Some sweet mid-late 80s powells here:

Dpeck100

Those look sick!

Man those boards bring back memories.

That has to be 20k worth of boards.

jbox

That is an awesome collection. I had the McGill (same color but the street version which was slightly smaller), and the Guerrero. Lots of memories on that wall for me!

jbox

Nathaniel1960

<< <i>I still have this deck (well, not the one in this picture, but one just like it):



I used to ride one of these until my son left it in the driveway and my wife crunched it:



Since that deck was discontinued, I replaced it with one of these:



I don't ride it much anymore, though. As I've gotten older I've gotten way more timid. I've found that I'm sorta scared to break something. >>



I have that exact Lance Mountain board sitting in my parent's garage. It's the mini version with orange OJ II wheels and either Independent or Tracker trucks, don't remember which. The deck is pristine except for grip tape on the top and a little wear on the tail. I also saved some other decks, including two Tommy Guerreros "flaming sword" from around '87 and a Mike McGill from '86. Can you tell I liked Powell Peralta?

I gave away probably ten decks (Vision, PP, Hosoi, T&C) from the '86-88 period still in their shrink wrap, wish I'd kept them. They were selling for $15 each a beach store in Daytona. Probably worth a few grand now.

But the highlight of my collection, if you can call it that, are two commercial sized Powell Peralta and Tracker banners, stashed somewhere at home.

I feel the same way about boarding now; if and when the kids pick it up I may join them for some very leisurely street skating.

Hallco

You do realize that by showing all of these pictures on this thread....my wife is going to hold each and every last one of you responsible if I go out and spend a bunch of money on skateboards this week and then proceed to try and ride like it's 1985 and ultimately break my neck, yes???

esquiresports

Oh man. I wish I hadn't seen this thread! I went and found my old board and now I want to buy one. I grew up in San Diego, where everyone had a skateboard. My parents didn't really have the cash to spend on a high-end board, so I got the below for Christmas. It's from a company called Nash. Pretty sure it was at Toys 'R' Us. While a pro style board would have been great, I loved this board for a couple years, when it met it's untimely demise by being backed over by a car.

I really am going to buy a nice version of this deck now!



Edited to add: the lack of any real connection between "Executioner" and the lizard/dragon thing was lost on me. Funny. I thought the name and drawing were cool.

stanforddude

This one has been creating quite a stir. Tony Hawk's first pro model. The graphic was discontinued and quickly replaced with Hawk's famous "chicken skull" graphic. As a result this one's quite rare. The rookie deck of the sport's biggest star. Likely will get sold off Ebay for somewhere in the $10k range. When is PSA going to start authenticating these things?




First Hawk