Bootleg Boards – Page 5 – Skate and Annoy

The Variflex Bootlegs?

The bootleg graphics (on the top picture) look exactly like the ones on the original Variflex decks. Variflex shifted production to Taiwan somewhere in the 80’s, so maybe they made both branded and unbranded decks at some point. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to bootleg such wildly successful graphics. Variflex had a great pro team […]

Kevin Staab bootlegs

In this edition of counterfeits we have 2 fake Sims decks. The blue one on the left is an almost exact copy of the Kevin Staab ‘Mad Scientist’ model from 1986, designed by John Lucero. The ‘Pirate’ model on the right was based on a Staab pro deck from 1987, designed by Lance Welborn. The […]

More Brand-X bootlegs

In June there were (at least) 2 fake Brand-X decks for sale. The left one is a copy of a 1986 Sean Goff model that was designed by Steve Krajewski, it even says ‘Sean Goff model’ on the top right. The right one was based on the 1987 XEX-model by Bernie Tostenson. It’s actually the […]

Grosso mania

The original ‘Alice’ from artist Jim Phillips is very sought-after and easily sells for a few big ones, but the counterfeits are quite popular too nowadays. Also, the graphic must have been spotted by various manufacturers in the past, who appear to have put very different efforts in copying the original Santa Cruz model from […]

Brand-X counterfeit

In this edition of counterfeits we have a fake Brand-X deck. The original team deck from 1987 was designed by silkscreen-artist Bernie Tostenson. In the late seventies and early eighties Bernie was working for Sims where he created the famous ‘Winged logo’ and Brad Bowman’s ‘Superman logo’. In 1984 he and Bud (a photographer and […]

McGill counterfeit

This crazy thing doesn’t need much explanation. It’s a bootleg of a Powell Peralta Mike Mcgill ‘Skull and Snake’ with snakeskin background from 1986 or 1987 and it even has wheel wells, where the original one (seen on right) doesn’t. The original artist is of course VCJ and I guess you could say that the […]

Kryptonics bootleg

In this edition of Bootleg Boards we have a Denny Riordon bootleg. Kryptonics used this graphic in 1988 for Denny’s first street deck. Later that year, after Kryptonics reincarnated into Toxic, they released a seemingly identical shaped Rordion deck with a slightly different ‘people in my head’ design. In 1990 the head popped up a […]

Street Warrior

This month’s counterfeit is a Street Warrior with a top side that bears a strong resemblance to a Per Welinder, courtesy of a French auction site. The bottom side looks like a knock off of a sideways glance at a Nash board, or a 7-Up advert. – Thanks to David Maes for the tip.

Gator bootleg

On this edition of counterfeit skateboards we have a completely generic looking Gator rip off found all the way over in Belgium, complete with a Tony Hawk Skategear sticker that definitely looks like it’s an 80’s vintage, but I’m wondering if it (sticker) is of a later vintage, because it doesn’t look familiar to me. […]