Came across these boards online. These are the only pics they posted. Obviously late 60s and probably 1969. They look pretty clean and still have the Waveset fins, one is the adjustable version. Does anyone with a good handle on the collector market have a clue to values of these?
Good riders. Clean condition. Collectible market?? A few hundred $$ each maximum. The WaveSet box is a plus for documentation as far as their age goes. The early Bahne box was seeing some use in 69–70. Wave Set and the Morey/Pope era were on their way out.
I’d say those have had little or zero use. On account of that may be the last unbroken Lexan variable WAVE-Set in existence. There were others that were made of the same black plastic as the finboxes and insert, they held up better, but normal use/hard turns would break the Lexan ones at the flanges where the screws went through. You’d have two sad round-head hex screws holding a couple busted fragments of plastic, the fin itself would be long gone, on the bottom confusing the fish.
I can think of a couple of beaches around here where the bottom must be littered with the things when they broke off the contemporary Weber Skis we sold. In a really ugly translucent chartreuse color.
That fin and its insert should be preserved… as a warning to future generations.
doc…
The boards are in Tennessee and were posted on Facebook by someone who does estate sales. So these were likely stored in a house in that area for a long time. How they wound up in Tennessee? Damned if I know.
You’d be surprised at the # of surf shop owners who hang it up, take their profits and buy horse ranch’s in Tennessee. Why any of them take surfboards with them I don’t know. Good on you for having the investigative skills to run down estate sales and auctions in other parts of the country. Have done a little of that myself. Were I a younger man; I think that’s how I’d make my living.
Boards come out of attics, garages, cellars. Somebody bought them and then their lives changed. I sometimes wonder what the stories with them were.
There’s quite a few, maybe somebody had that last summer, before they got drafted and went off to get shot at. Some didn’t come back, some did but they were changed and they never picked up the board again.
Knew a guy, he was a pheasant hunter farm kid from Illinois. His life went the opposite. Came back from the Air Force and Laos, took up surfing here on the coast of New England, got good at it. And salt water fishing, and duck hunting. The opposite of that coin. Then wound up in western Virginia, well inland.
Where somebody, someday, might run across a beat up Wayne Lynch and wonder what it was all about.
doc…
There condition and the fin boxes are what’s amazing to me. Excellent condition. I was wondering if these boards may have been manufactured on the East Coast. By the time these boards were made, almost everybody in San Diego County had switched over to the early Bahne/Fins Unlimted box. Of course just a year or six months could make a difference in materials used on late 60’s early 70’s boards. I believe the West Coast boards were originally glassed at Tony Channins glass shop in Del Mar. The glass jobs are at least Channin quality. But someone mentioned in another thread that Challenger boards were also manufactured on the East Coast. The reason I think they may be East Coast boards is the use of the Wave Set box. Even though a new box was being used by many on the West Coast, the East Coast factory may have used up what they had on hand. Products developed on the west Coast came East slower. If you had a dozen Wave Set boxes on hand you would probably use them up before you switched over to Bahne.
Yup! A google search found these boards. Tinker shaped. $35 shipping from Alabammie. There is some really great reading around on the web about Challenger Eastern and Tinker. Michel Junod and Jim Philllips etc. opened my eyes to a legend I knew nothing about.