Seller Notes: “dirty, it’s been used in the street…”

It’s just an auction or a single z-roller truck, vintage, yes, but not a big deal. It’s the auction description that is the best part, and it comes from S&A reader “Skater Dave” who is peddling some of his old gear to make up for lost wages due to a skateboard injury. While I have no scans of the x-ray, I do have the auction description preserved for posterity.

I’ve seen these with gray, black, yellow, and orange rollers. I’ve heard rumor of red years ago, but never saw one so I don’t believe it. Later they made them with metal rollers…there were way more of those made… god knows why… This was half of the only pair of orange ones I ever saw until I lost one… stupid, yes but certainly not the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in terms of screwing up future collectibles. Ranking right up there would be spray painting a Biniak Bullet fiberglass bottom, trading a Shogo Kubo Airbeam for a Malba K-Beam, then losing the K-Beam because I got wasted and left it somewhere, or simply failing to ever buy that beautiful Kanoa Surf deck with the routed out bits that looked sort of like the Sims Brad Bowman… What was that? The Lonnie Hiramoto model maybe? I heard that dude’s skating again. I bet even HE doesn’t have any of those anymore.

Aaaanyway, here is a single Z-Roller truck with two Powell Bones wheels. This is sort of a mixed era deal. Those of you who know will understand, and for those who don’t here’s why. The wheels are from the ’70s before we started to grasp the advantage of putting a nice radius on the front AND back of the wheel, in order to roll on and off of the coping without it catching. Not long after these Powell put out the Cubic, which had a nice fat radius front and back which reminds me of yet ANOTHER stupid thing I once did which was to buy some blue Kryptonics CX something or others instead of the Cubics… But the truck is from the ’80s and in my experience they showed up after the first wave of parks had almost all died out, most folks quit skating, then a whole new wave of kids picked it up again and wheels like this were already obsolete. Nevertheless, while trying to use these “trucks” I preferred this combo because I needed to be able to feel where I was in terms of what I was rolling on. I mean, with a conical or radius back wheel you’d get up on a curb or whatever and roll from wheel to truck-roller to wheel and never know what was touching and instead of grinding you’d go even faster and well, I just found the whole proposition sketchy as hell.

Oh yeah, the bearings in the wheels and trucks are also “vintage” which means I quit using them in the ’80s and haven’t tended to them since, so they’re pretty crunchy. I thought about replacing them but decided that would ruin the integrity of the offering as “genuine old school” 😉

Sorry I lost one, but this one’s for sale and it starts cheap: $0.03 and no reserve.

Shipping should be around $8.00 I think. I’ve never mailed one of these before…

If you buy this, and your wife gets mad because you spent too much on it and you have to ask for your money back, please do it within two weeks okay? And you’ll have to spring for the return shipping too, so don’t do anything rash.

Sorry to assume it’ll only be guys bidding on this, but I’m sort of biased towards believing women are smarter than men and wouldn’t be stupid enough to spend hard earned money on crap like this UNLESS you’re buying it for your skateboarder husband, in which case I say bid aggressively ma’am, bid with passion. Because you’re obviously intelligent, thoughtful, and the coolest wife ever… after mine!

Here’s a few more good ones:

Green Rails

Sword & Skull bonite edition.