Here’s another counterfeit Brand-X Sean Goff deck, this time in a different color way. Amazing that they straight ripped off the graphic without changing Sean’s name, and hilarious that they stuck a Powell graphic on top. – Thanks to Christoff Vermeulen for the pics.

Tanner Palm sent in a couple pics of a “Smia” Bootleg of the Kevin Staab Pirate deck. It’s the same board seen in this post, but the pictures are high resolution and the top is visible as well.

This is clearly a Kevin Staab bootleg. More than one company seems to have copied the ‘Mad Chemist’ graphic in the past. We had some here and I have seen some other fake Staabs around.  The original deck was designed by John Lucero in 1986 for Sims. Also, this fake one is made by Saturn, the same company that produced the fake Monty Nolder from December. It was also the same seller who sold this deck on eBay. This one went for £10.73 after 5 bids. Thanks to John William Davies for the tip and Chandra Ruegg for the pictures.

This fake Kryptonics complete is even less well known than the first Kryptonics bootleg that I posted on S&A.  I had to check AOS  to find out that the original graphic came from a 1989 team deck, called ‘Footprint’. Also, I have never seen bootlegs with this shape and coloured grip. Kryptonics started to make crappy boards near the end of the 90s (I think around ’97), but this is definitely a bootleg, since the seller confirmed that he got it when he was a kid in the 80’s. Price: £0,99 on Gumtree! Thanks to Nicola Rushent for the pictures.

While wasting time on Alibaba.com, I saw a lot of bootlegs. Especially the more recent Tony Hawk designs from Birdhouse seem popular to rip off. If you order a minimum of 100 decks, you’ll get them for a few dollars a piece. Yes, I definitely took most of these pics from the sellers, but what will they say? That I stole from them? Also, take a quick tour in their factory here.

On this edition of counterfeit skateboards we have a pretty good rip off of a Tony Hawk claw board. In fact, it’s decent enough to fool the casual viewer. When you look at it up close you realize it’s a bit off. The main drawing is inexplicably off center and the tree branches are not as full as the others, even so they don’t extend to the bottom of the deck. Also missing, the Powell Peralta logo under the claw. The shape is pretty similar, actually, but the tail dome and nose guard are stock, and are definitely suspicious. A reader scored this for $5 at a yard sale. I’ve paid more for worse! – Thanks to Fungandus for the pics

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 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.