4/8/2024 0 Comments A RARE FIND TURNS TO GOLDby Corky Carroll From 1976 to 1986 I worked as Advertising Director of SURFER magazine. During that period I was lucky to have hired a young extremely bright eyed and bushy tailed graphic designer named Mark Samuels. I immediately nick-named him “Cubby,” there was no other choice. The dude was the perfect “Cubby.” Some mousekateer ears was all that was missing. The kid turned out to be a great asset to the department and would become a lifetime friend. Along with being a super talented graphic designer, having gone on to own SDA CREATIVE in Laguna Hills, Cubby was also a stoked young surfer. The following is a great story on how he came across a classic vintage surfboard and pulled off one of the all time, “let’s hold onto this and one day it will be worth something” deals. Here is the story in his own words: “It’s another hot August day and finishing up a surf session in Huntington Beach with my good buddy Dave Nelson. The year is 1973 and we’d just graduated from high school, and we were milking the last surfing summer of our youth. Driving home on PCH, we noticed a garage sale sign. Dave and I weren’t exactly rolling in dough but decided to swing by and maybe find a deal. Little did we know. When we pulled up, I saw an odd little twin-fin leaning against the guy’s house. The board was a tad over 5’ and appeared to be balsa. It didn’t have any logos or graphics, just a very small, stamped, name near the tail… Al Nelson – La Jolla. I thought it was cool, so I asked the old guy what he wanted for it. With a cigarette hanging out of his mouth he said, “it’s yours for $14”. That sounded fair to me, but all I had that day was seven bucks. So, I hit up Dave for the other seven. He eyed the board carefully and said “ok, maybe we can make a table out of it”. I explained to Dave that if this board did have any value, pounding legs into it would ruin it for sure. I promised him that I would put the board in the rafters of my parent’s garage and someday when we’re old and gray I’d sell it as an antique and split the money with him. Dave handed me over seven bucks in quarters and the “Al Nelson” balsa went up on the racks for the ride home. Our days of hanging out at the beach faded into careers, marriage, kids and a mortgage. I gave little thought to the dusty old balsa, shuffling it around as we changed addresses. Many years later and having an ocean view office, I thought it would look cool hanging above my door. It hung up there for many years, until one day I noticed a client of mine eyeing it closely for several minutes. My client was Spencer Croul, a well-heeled Laguna Beach surfer and vintage board collector that also co-owned the Surfing Heritage Museum in San Clemente. He complemented me on the old balsa and was soon on his way.
It wasn’t more than an hour later that Spencer gave me a call and says he’d like to buy that board. He tells me he’ll bring over 4k cash before the end of the day. Knowing that Spencer had a keen eye for vintage boards, I immediately googled anything I could find about this old Al Nelson Balsa. Nothing came up, zero, nada, so I call Spencer back and we made the deal. He was back over in 30 minutes, cash in hand. He told me he thought it would look great in his collection, but knew little of it’s pedigree. After a quick photo I watched that old balsa go out the door and out of my life. That evening I gave my old friend Dave a call. I said “Dave, remember that old balsa I bought at that garage sale?” “No”, Dave said. I said “c’mon, remember you loaned me 7 bucks and you wanted to make a table out of it”. Again, Dave said “no”. After trying to jog Dave’s memory to no avail I gave up. I reminded him of a promise to split the money when I finally sold the old balsa. Dave came by the house later that week and I put 20 crisp hundred dollar bills in his palm. He was pretty stoked, not bad for a seven dollar investment in quarters. Since then, video and info have surfaced declaring this board to be the missing link between shortboards and longboards, ridden by many of the great surfers of that era like Butch Van Artsdalen. Apparently sometime in the late 60’s it disappeared without a trace. I’m glad I didn’t make a table out of it.” Just a little added note: Al Nelson was one of the hard core La Jolla / Windansea crew that had been an early big wave rider and San Diego surf legend. Yay Cubby.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |