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At the height of the collector market (around 1998) many 'completist' collectors would pay some silly prices for mint condition popouts that were otherwise crap. I still see poor, misguided folks on ebay trying to unload Keokis, Dextras, and Dukes who use price quotes from auctions that happened eight years ago as the basis for their valuation. Those days are over.
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Exactly - I remember seeing collectors clutching a bad photocopy of a mimeographed list of old board prices to themselves like it was the last lost dead sea scroll. Because it gave a 'value', but it was for a perfect example of their beat-up, never-was-much-good old clunker, a price that might have been valid at the height of the collector market/dot-com bubble, when a few tech muli-millionaire ex-surfers with ludicrous money spent far too much of it on large collections...and which prices were never seen again.
And those insanely high prices were used as a basis to inflate prices of old boards in general, resulting in that 'list' that would-be sellers referred to and tried to get, huddling together with their garages full of old junk boards and talking to one another about their 'accumulations' ( not 'collections', as they were not of a quality to justify the term) and how wealthy they'd be when some multi-millionaire uber-collector took the brown, dinged-up, mangy things off their hands.
Meanwhile, and what really ticked me off, older, longer boards that would have been fine beginner's boards for kids without much money were instead hoarded as if they were made of a precious metal. If a kid starting out wanted his own board he had to pony up a fair amount of money which he likely didn't have.
I might call that oft-copied price list science fiction, except I happen to like science fiction and wouldn't want to cast a slur like making that comparison - lets just call the price list fantasy. Then there are the eBay auction prices that are sometimes used as 'values' for similar boards.... which are frequently only start or reserve prices, the boards never sold and indeed nobody bid on 'em at all.
It would be as if I put my old Mercedes car on an auction, with a floor price of $50,000 US. Except we're not talking about a 1968 Gullwing SL coupe ( a very expensive machine of genuine rarity and considerable technical interest which also had a high original price ) but we're talking about my old car which was a 1974 240D diesel sedan, a bit rusty, needing rings and a valve job, half a million kilometers on it and the upholstery was tired. They made millions of them, they were the low end model to begin with and that one had been used up, it was cheaper to buy another one in good shape than to have the valves and rings fixed. Asking $50,000 would be a bit nuts.
These days , most of the uber-rich have smartened up and get people like Sammy and me to value 'collectable' boards for them. The really, really rich are not stupid, for the most part, which is how they got that way. But there's exceptions......
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I brokered a deal last year in which a filthy rich couple bought a mint condition "Orca" for $800. They wanted it for a decoration in their guest cottage, since they are learning how to "surf". (Insert vomiting noise)
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Nggghhhhrelppphhhh ( vomiting noise inserted ) - I kinda have issues with the concept of a mint condition "Orca" as those things sucked even on the moment they came out of the factory. $800, as maybe decor in an upscale surf-themed bar in New York City ( "Nggghhhhrelppphhhh" again ) where they'll go out of business soon anyways, that I could understand. But for a wall hanger in a cottage? Ohhhhkaaaayyyyy, I can't understand how they pay what they do for 'art' either.... I might hope, for their sakes, that they manage to hang onto some of their money, as with expenditures like that it'd be a real question.
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" Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different. "
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Me, I have a four-board collection. Two are my first board and another one that I got after retiring that first one. And then the two I use these days.
The rich can be 'different' or 'eccentric'...I'm just a little weird...
doc...
