This isn’t a clickbait article, it’s a Roller Derby sales brochure from 1964. I found a pdf on my hard drive dating back to 2010, and the meta data revealed it might hav come from someone named Benjamin Marcus, so I’ve sent an email asking for more info. The scans show hole punches for placing the pages in a binder. Unfortunately, it looks like some of the pages were cut at some point to fit in the binder. The middle section contents sometimes gets cropped.

OK get ready for it, this is a long one. I found a catalog for Athena International Corp in that magical place you’ve all heard me refer to: a box in the darkest depths of my basement. 8 pages of amazing crap in glorious color! Lot’s of bootleg stuff in there too… they even bootlegged the Nash logo! The styles are split between the 70’s and 80’s so it’s difficult to say exactly when this was printed, although there are a couple clues. I have no idea where/when I acquired this, I might have bought it off Ebay or a reader might have sent it to me. ( Was it you? Let me know! ) Enjoy!

I had a brief not-very-real skateshop that I ran out of my bedroom in the late 80’s. I sent out a bunch of requests for wholesale catalogs and tried to open some accounts. I put together an order based on requests from locals and what I could get ahold of, I ordered some staples like mounting hardware and a roll of grip tape, etc… One of things I got was a Nash catalog. Why get a Nash catalog when the product was so poor? For shits and giggles! It’s one of the few things I kept during the great purge of 1999. Yes, I deeply regret throwing out the rest of it. Joe Cool and Mad could have been their own separate posts, but some of the products appeared on the same page, so click through if you want to see more of Snoopy and Alfred E. Neuman.

No, this is not a new addition the Skate and Annoy galleries, but an independent effort by Chris Lees, AKA Skatelurker who must have the same strain of skateboard-related OCD that I do. As of publication, there are 309 skateboard catalogs posted in the collection on the Internet Archives. The most recent one I saw added was from 2019, but the bulk of them are from the 90’s and early to mid 2000’s. I did spot a Sunski catalog from 1978(!), and a few from the late 80’s including a California Surf Style from 1988, and a Skates on Haight from 1987. You can use the filters on the side bar to sort by the original publication dates. Fair warning: This will drastically affect your productivity!

I must have sent away for a catalog from Action Sports in 1984. I just found the postmarked envelope with full color one sheet and photocopied price list. I think that tagline is supposed to read “The 1 Ultimate High.” Aside from the vaguely Celtic typeface, it’s an interesting choice for a time when any given correspondence with a smaller skate brand seemed to have about a 50% chance of including a short handwritten a religious message. I’m not sure why I sent any for this catalog in 1984, since I never really rated the Action Sports brand. I think it might have been because the Invader had a sly look to it.

Or, as Lands’ End phrased it in a recent catalog, “Skate like a pro, dress like their agent.” Hopsack Blazers, available in “Big Boy” and “Little Boy” sizes.

– Thanks to Tallboy Can for the scan.

The auction said this Black Knight skateboard appeared in a 1976 Montgomery Ward catalog. I would have thought that was an error towards being too late, but the copy says there are no loose bearings, which would imply precision bearings, so 1976 sounds reasonable after all. I had always thought the Black Knight boards were from the late 60’s or early 70’s. Maybe someone suckered the buyer at Wards into taking a bunch of dead weight NOS. Then there’s the “molded fiber wheels.” Composite wheels and closed bearings? That’s a rare combination.

1965 was a good year for skateboards in catalogs. Here’s a page from a Sears catalog featuring Sears branded skateboards, which are essentially Nash-style copies, some like the Spyder are so similar that the were likely made by Nash. The ad copy has some choice bits like “So sturdily built it supports an adult” and “Professional rink skate wheels of tough plastic.” The 35″ Hang Ten Surfer model has a Mahogany top layer. The Wipe Out Surfer has a walnut core with fiberglass rails (rails in the surfboard sense, not the skateboard, bottom of the deck plastics) Rubber trucks are listed as a selling point. We’ve seen plastic ones before…

[Source: Ad – Skateboard]

I swear there are less than five pictures of the Long Rider skateboard on the internet. Thanks to a tip from House of Neil I found this one tucked away on page 471 of the 1984 Montgomery Wards Christmas Catalog. It wasn’t as easy as doing a search in Google Images. You know how I’m going through the tedious process of scanning old skate zines page by page? Well, someone else over at Wishbookweb.com with a less narrow obsessive compulsive disorder is scanning and posting entire Christmas catalogs. So far there are about 20 catalogs up there, with dates ranging from 1933 to 1988. I’ve gone through a bunch of likely suspects, and there are a few skateboards in there.

The first skateboard I ever rode came from Sears. My dad bought it for my mom at a Sears catalog outlet store. At the time, Midland Michigan wasn’t big enough for an actual Sears store. Instead, we had a small shop with a few displays of smaller objects you could buy on spot, and a counter that you would go to to look at the Sears catalog, pay for what you wanted, and pick it up when it arrived. One saturday the family made a trip there and my mom became infatuated with a stand of Roller Derby brand banana boards. They looked just like board “B” above, only yellow. My father, being infatuated with my mother, decided to buy it for her. I think it was $14.99.