Ha ha! No excuses this month because this one should be right on time! Midway through the following month is right when you should start looking for Baywatch, and I pretty much made it! Some months are a chore to write, and it feels like pulling teeth, but some months just flow easily, and that was true of March. I think there’s a really good selection of stuff this month, with some high priced items but balanced out by some interesting but cheaper decks too. But enjoy this one because April is looking absolutely terrible so far. I can’t remember a month with so few high priced decks and so many uninteresting mid priced decks! Really, it’s a barren wasteland out there so far this month! And it’s funny because I just had an argument with a guy on skullandbones who asked why there are so few good NOS decks on eBay these days. I argued that he just wasn’t looking hard enough, which was probably true in March, but judging by April he is right. I hope that this worrying trend ends quickly, because this is going to be a damned dull column going forward if things continue at…

Damn, it seems like I make excuses every month for how late the column is! Well this month I have a real excuse: I was in Maui on vacation. I considered taking a laptop with me for about 10 seconds, but then the hassles of getting it through security and having something else to carry made me realize that it was a bad idea. Not to mention the fact that I realized that there would be no way I would be spending 4 hours inside typing while in Maui. Sorry guys, I had other stuff to do. I also became a US citizen in March, so that chewed up some time too! It’s been a busy month all in all.

It’s funny how this column comes together. It’s different every month. Last month for example it took me about 3 weeks to put it all together. I’d do one section, wait to get motivated for a week, force myself to do a few decks, then come back a few days later and do some more. But some months like this one everything just flows and I crank out the whole thing in a couple of days. It feels much better this way; you get in a flow and just ride it out. Hours go by without noticing it. It’s good. Hopefully you guys enjoy them all, but this one feels extra special somehow. Of course the decks that get featured have a lot to do with that too. It’s tough to find new stuff to say when you’re featuring a Hawk birdclaw for the 50th time. So you might notice that there are no Hawks, no Natas and no McGill decks featured this month. That was half by chance and half by choice. I hope you don’t miss them! Check Out eBay Watch: January 2010.

In Tony Hawk’s book Occupation: Skateboarder he mentions that when his very first pro model was released in 1982 it wasn’t exactly a top seller. Hell, if anything, it was a bottom dweller. To add insult to injury the market for skateboards back then was nonexistent at best, so to not have a remotely popular model translated to mere pennies on the royalty dollar—more precisely, 85 cents, the whopping sum total of which Tony claimed to represent one of his earliest royalty check payments as a paid professional skateboarder.

I’m sorry that this is a couple of weeks late everybody. I could make excuses about how busy the Christmas season is and other shit that’s going on in my life, but truth be told there wasn’t much that went off in December on eBay that got me fired up. When I have lots of exciting stuff to cover I get fired up and this shit types itself. But when it’s an average month with tons of the same old same old to sort through, it gets difficult to get motivated to look for the unusual and type for hours on end. So it was in December. There was some interesting stuff, but very little that got me really excited. Now, looking forward to January I already have some good stuff stored, so that is looking a lot more promising! Anyway, that being said I hope you enjoy this months edition because I worked really hard on it, and tried not to give you the same old Hawks and Gators etc.

Yes, the bottom of this Brad Bowman deck is naked, but I wouldn’t go for such a cheap shot. Instead, click here for cheap shot that is so fuzzy it might be SFW. The seller of this lovely item (listed at $475) also has things like petrified buffalo skulls and 300,000 a year old turtle fossilized turtle shell. Times are tough when you have to sell your nudie board and your Museum of Natural History pieces. – Thanks to Chip Jones for the tip.

Lots of things for sale on eBay. I was looking up some vintage skate shirts and found this guy who is making his girlfriend model all his t-shirts for eBay. “Come on baby, you’ll be star.” Whatever, at least she looks like she’s into it. Left to right: Droors shirt from the 90’s, G&S skateboards from the 80’s, and Globe Australia from… ? He’s got some “punk” items and snowboard related stuff, plus Styx…. Best part is, you can’t really see the the design on the shirts in most of pictures. That’s marketing!

I forgot this one when I made the Wheel Packaging post the other day. It’s Banzai Products wheels. The corresponding check boxes are all blank, so it’s impossible to tell which ones these are. It’s curious that Banzai Products repackaged another companies trucks (ACS) and sold them. ACS stands for American Cycle Systems, by the way, and were still seen advertised in the early issues of Thrasher, if my memory serves correctly. Getting back to it, these NOS Banzai wheels sold for $47 on eBay. Banzai also made a wicked aluminum board too. It’s funny how in the U.S., anything Japanese was considered exotic in the 30’s, evil in the 40’s, cheap and crappy in the 50’s and 60’s, and then Radical in the 70’s and 80’s.

There’s not much I can say about this “invention,” except I particularly dig the shoes and pants in the close up shot. A sharp dressed man can sell anything in Swartz Creek, Michigan. Skaterhusseindave, we expect a full report. I am selling a custom built board with a caster wheel on one end that will allow the user to spin around 180 and 360 degrees and a closed wheel on the other end. The board is made of red oak with 24 gauge Aluminum in the middle. Custom skateboard comes fully assembled. Each board is custom made upon order thus the long delivery time. Since each board is custom made thus no returns will be accepted. The seller doesn’t explain what the casters or rubber stoppers are for, so you are on your own there. He has zero transactions on eBay so far, so you can be the first. – Thanks to Matthijs van Wijk for the tip.

This little piece of perfection can be yours. All you need is $1500, and maybe 4-8 more of these because it’s only four feet wide. The best part is, it was built for BMX. Holy cow. It’s in Mokena, IL. I think that other horribly crappy ramp for sale that we featured was in Illinois too. Remember that one? I can’t find it. At least this one looks really, really well built. It has a the smell of something built by a well meaning but clueless parent. I can imagine the surprise on the kid’s face. “Gee, uh, thanks Dad.” Where else but eBay? Craig’s list, maybe.