Until the advent of concaves and laminated board construction, the barrier to entry in skateboard manufacturing was pretty low, especially if you already had a business that manufactured wooden objects. That’s why there were a plethora of small, regional skateboard brands in the 70’s like the Land Glider, made by Kentucky Woodcrafts in Gray Hawk, Kentucky. Gray Hawk is a small unincorporated community about an hour and a half south of Lexington. My bet is there’s someone in that community that still knows who made these. There does not appear to be business with that name currently, but I did find one 11 miles away in Mckee, Kentucky with a. dead phone number. Yes, it is 12:30pm on a Tuesday in Portland, Oregon and I am calling random wood shops in Kentucky trying to find out (what?) about an almost 50 year old skateboard. – Thanks to Kurt Katnik for the photos.

There’s some buzz about a large collection of skate memorabilia up for sale, not only because of the size of the collection, but the method and price. Right now the only way to see it is via Instagram. The seller reportedly is asking $125,000 for the entire lot, and is unwilling to break it up piecemeal. So far the seller has not been identified, but the collection includes a statistically abnormal concentration of gear from Skatemaster Tate and Adrian Demain, which may provide some clues. Is this interesting? Yes, but the thing that really fascinates and intrigues me is the inclusion of a mega-rare, but ultimately valueless (except to Neil and myself) Skate and Annoy t-shirt in the middle of the collection. This is probably second iteration of a design that went through 3 changes. The first batch was screen printed in a house on a makeshift rig with water based inks printed on cheap Hanes undershirts bought in 3 packs at local discount warehouse/clearance type of store. I imagine I screened less than 2 dozen. The version in this collection is likely the second iteration, and may have been printed on slightly higher quality shirts, but again, would have…

This is the Skatesurfer from RC Sports, Not to be confused with the RC cola skateboard. It features the gold standard of performance accessories – “Rol Best” wheels. You know this the very best they have to offer, because the pro-line checkbox comes after “special” and “supreme.” It comes assembled in a box, but it also includes a sticker mounting instructions for the trucks. A very specific sticker actually, right down to the option between Chicago or Sure-grip trucks. and which size screws to use in each case. This should place this skateboard somewhere in the 70’s, although I usually associate the ridged construction on the bottom with late 80’s toy store boards at the earliest. Very interesting, in a very nerdy sort of way. This one came from Aarons Toys and sold for $80. Holy cow, RC Sports in Olathe Kansas is actually still in business! They only sell roller skates and inline skates these days, but ironically there’s a skate tool from Pig Wheels on the front page.

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.

I want to start off this month with a couple of rants, so forgive me please. First up, to all people selling decks on eBay, stop using terms like “Vintage” and “NOS” when you are selling a fucking reissue!! Using the word vintage implies that the deck is 20 years old or more. Your shitty reissue was made 3 years ago. The only thing vintage is probably the crappy PC that you used to type up the shitty sales pitch! The same goes with the term NOS. It stands for “New Old Stock”, meaning it’s an old deck that is as new, and has never been set up. When using this term, the inference is that it’s an old deck, not one that I could walk into a store and buy today. Are the sellers being unscrupulous and trying to fool ignorant buyers? Probably, yes. By inserting the word “vintage” you are making a claim that isn’t true. So stop. Also, while I’m on the subject of sellers that piss me off, stop listing the same deck week after week, month after month with the same inflated price! Look, it’s not rocket science. If your deck isn’t selling at $399…