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 1989. So go ahead and waste your time looking  for the differences!

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 salesman) started Brand-X. They ran the underground company for about 5 years illegally  from Bernie’s garage, where Bernie did all those crazy silkscreens. He said these were the happiest years of his life and they had fun, while the big companies destroyed the soul of skateboarding. In 1988 Brand-X made a partnership with one of their distributors and did well for about one year, but the story goes that the new partner stole the Brand-X name, fired the whole crew and amateur team, hired cheap artists and screeners and let the company die in only a few months. Bernie still designed for Flip in the nineties. He died in 2009. For sale at 2dehands.be.

[Sources: Disposable 1 and 2 by Sean Cliver]

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 counterfeiter made a pretty nice ‘interpretation’ of VCJ’s work, although the ‘skating fox with slippers’ on the topside has nothing to do with the ripper or any of the Powell graphics. For sale on Ebay. Thanks to Sara Raso for the pics.

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 third time on a Toxic Riordon freestyle deck. Maybe whoever copied that deck thought it was a very popular design, although the ripoff we have here was clearly based on the first version of the graphic. Even the skull with the dagger on the top side reminds me of the Ripstik and mid to late eighties Kryptonics decks or maybe it’s because their boards looked kinda cheap as well.

Sold on Ebay for $15 on a Buy It Now.

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.

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.

– Thanks to David Maes for the tip.

On this edition of counterfeit board of the month we have a Jim Thiebaud bootleg that surfaced in Portugal on the local equivalent of Craigslist or Ebay, or something, Custo Justo. ON the left is an actual Jim Thiebaud model from SMA, circa 1989. On the right is cheap knockoff.

– Thanks to Samuel Silva for the tip.

Spotted on Craigslist, a Free Former board with Gator style graphics. According to Wikipedia, California Free Former went out of business in 1981, which means this is another Frankenstein graphic. I love how the owner put an actual Vision sticker on the top to try and throw everyone off the counterfeit scent.

– Thanks to Seth Levy for the tip.

One of the joys of bootleg skateboards occurs when the perpetrator can’t quite decide which board to rip off, so they combine two or more into one. In this case we’ve got a Natas / Grosso hybrid that was literally printed on paper and then laminated on both sides of the so-called deck. So sloppily in fact that the panther looks like it’s about to slide off the side of the board. Available on Ebay, where the seller calls it a Natas Caupas. – Thanks to David Maes for the tip.

In honor of Thanksgiving, here’s a cornucopia of counterfeit skateboards. There’s the Roger/Roskopp on the left, a Vallely ripoff that says “sports,” and tying in nicely, another World Industries knockoff, a generic Flameboy. The two on the left are from the same company, Rolls Racer. The funny thing about the Flameboy knockoff is that it’s a mid to late 90’s era (or later) graphic on a bad 80’s style board. The Flameboy was spotted in Peru of all places. (Thanks to Seth) The fake Vallely hails from the land of Ebay, and the Roskopp is from a French auction site. (Thanks to David Maes)