Ah- y’see, there’s ‘suggested retail’ and what they go for at end-of-year, when whoever has 'em wants to generate some cash for next year’s merchandise. ‘Sporting goods’ stores and department stores love 'em, the markup is considerable, and they often discount the hell out of them… On the other side of the coin, most hand made surfboards, well, the actual surf shop shop makes chump change on them, the profit is in wetsuits and t-shirts and so forth. Really, I used to make more on a dozen t-shirts than I made on a new board.
Why do they sell something that’s a pain to repair? So you chuck it and buy another one. Look, the mainstream surf biz and mainstream surfboard merchandising have always been about conning the suckers. That’s how it works. Once you get to the point where you’re not a sucker any more, well, it changes. You’re getting there.
Sanding. Sandpaper and your wee paddy paw hands. Grits from 200 (to rough it up a little for paint adhesion) up, ever larger areas. Eventually polish, if you want to go nuts. Transitioning- awright, nothing is perfect, including quality control at Jungle Edge Laminates somewhere on the Pacific Rim where this was built in the first place . Remember, ‘perfection is the mortal enemy of good enough’.
Look, selling it - you will get lowballed, it is what it is. How much you wanna pay for a used high mileage Hyundai sedan? On the other hand-
Once opon a time, I bought a really good custom fishing rod, set up exactly as I wanted it. Lovely thing, 30+ years on I still have it. When I got it, I was going to move the Penn spinning reel I had on my old previous off-the-department-store-shelf rod to the new on. But…my buddy, who built the rod for me, he had some words of wisdom.
He said “Look, Doc, think a bit. You go fishing and you take a friend who knows little or nothing. do you really want him or her thrashing around with your nice new rod? Get another reel (identical) for the new rod and keep the old one for guests”.
Smart man. I did just that, which is part of the reason I still have that lovely rod 30 years on…
In the same way, keep this as your beater, for guests, teaching the new hot blonde, crowds, dinky wave grovelling. It’s paid for. It’s pretty rugged. And if it gets thumped, it gets thumped. It’ll take you a little longer to get the money for that new board, okay, good, take that time to educate yourself more so the next board is genuinely better.
hope that’s of use
doc…