old boards fast
becoming collectible

PORT ARANSAS -- Surfing, long recognized as a celebration of youth, is now celebrating its age.

Surfing museums are sprouting as far away as Japan and as near as Port Aransas. And many surfing devotees who started riding waves as teen-agers in the 1960s are seeking out and collecting the now-vintage boards of their youth.

The trend has turned into a cottage industry, with some surfboards selling for thousands of dollars and collector catalogs listing the nuances of hundreds of kinds of boards.

To the collector, possessing a vintage surfboard is an expression of reverence for the past and respect for craftsmanship.

Twenty-seven years ago, when Pat Magee was a champion surfer of Texas, he rode the era's characteristically long, solidly built surfboards with brand names like Hansen and Bing.

Since then, surfboard design has evolved wildly, with surfboards getting lighter, becoming shorter and then getting long again.

Today, Magee owns a Port Aransas surf shop with one wing dedicated as a museum for vintage surfboards -- many like the ones he rode in the 1960s.

"I've always enjoyed the old boards and enjoyed the early days of surfing so much," Magee said recently. "I just want to keep our heritage going."

No one knows for sure when surfing began. Many surf historians accept 400 A.D. as one of the earliest verifiable periods people were riding waves, said Rich Watkins, administrator of the California Surf Museum in Oceanside. Newly immigrated from Polynesian islands, the surfers were Hawaiians, probably lying prone on wooden boards.

Three Hawaiian princes introduced surfing to many Americans in 1865 when they surfed at Santa Cruz, Calif., while studying in the United States.

Some of the earliest surfboards were made of solid wood and weighed 150 pounds. Today, most weigh less than 10 pounds.

With each new advance in surfboard design -- making surfboards lighter, more maneuverable and easier to obtain -- surfing became more popular.

Developments over the years have included the construction of the hollow wood surfboard in the 1920s; first use of resin and fiberglass on balsa wood boards in the 1940s; and mass production of surfboards with polyurethane foam cores and fiberglass shells in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

With mass production, surfing exploded in popularity. The sport melded with the 1960s youth culture. The phenomenons of surf movies, surf music and surf clothing reaching throughout the United States.

Surfboards generally were on the long side in the early 1960s, with many 9 feet long and longer.

Short surfboards -- usually 6 to 8 feet long -- started getting popular in the mid-1960s, and they remain popular today.

Around 1990, long surfboards began making a comeback. New longboards are lighter and more maneuverable than the ones built in the early 1960s.

But baby boomers still love the old longboards, and they are snapping up the well-preserved ones.

"It's mainly made up of older guys who have been surfing many, many years," said Nick Carroll, editor-in-chief of Surfing magazine, an internationally distributed publication based in San Clemente, Calif.

"Now they've gone on in their life, and they've got plenty of money, and they've got a nostalgia for the old days of surfing, and they're willing to pay good money for vintage surfboards," Carroll said. "There's a heck of a market in it actually."

Watkins, the museum administrator and a 48-year-old Vietnam veteran, speaks on the subject as both observer and participant.

"Baby boomers from the 1960s were essentially destroyed a lot by Vietnam -- I know I was. That kind of tore the fabric apart of the boomers back then.

"But I think after 25 years, the boomers realize how much fun they had back then. So much was going on back then -- the music, clothes and just riding the surf.

"What you see now is boomers now comfortable, in their 40s and 50s, and they are reliving those days -- and not only in the form of collections. I'm back out on a 9-foot surfboard, and just about everyone I know of is back out on a 9-foot surfboard again."

But it's not just surfers who are buying classic surfboards, Magee said.

"Dentists are buying them, putting them in their offices," Magee said, offering an example. "It's just kind of a showpiece like an antique coffee table or an old firearm."

Many surfboards are not just tools of sport but also works of art, said Sam Ryan, a California surf historian who runs a mail-order business that sells vintage surfboards to people all over the world.

"They are handmade items," said Ryan, who also owns the Longboard Grotto, a surf shop in Encinitas, Calif. "It's like folk art. I call it coastal folk art. You can surf it, utilize it. Or hang it on the wall as a piece of art. You can paint it. I think it's fabulous."

The work of several kinds of craftsmen can go into making one surfboard. In some cases, one person shapes a surfboard's foam core while another coats the foam with fiberglass and another paints the surfboard.

While a long surfboard manufactured today usually costs between $350 and $500, some older surfboards can fetch much higher prices. Certain highly collectible 1960s-era surfboards that originally cost $65 might sell now for as much as $4,500, Watkins said.

Ryan said wood surfboards built longer ago can cost as much as $25,000. Such surfboards were made by "rugged guys -- pioneers who lived under piers and hand-built surfboards with really primitive tools," he said.

The value of vintage surfboards depends on age, rareness, condition, brand and other factors.

John Trice, the 44-year-old president of an American Bank branch on Padre Island and a longtime surfer, loves his freshly restored 1955 Gordy surfboard.

"It is so cool, it's unbelievable. We have it hanging in our living room at the house," Trice said.

Trice said he will not paddle his Gordy into the Gulf of Mexico -- or any other body of water for that matter.

"Never," he said. "It's a collector's item. It's something I could never replace."

More surfing museums exist now than ever, Ryan said. There are at least two in Japan, he said.

Magee said Japanese collectors have contacted him about surfboards in his shop.

"Surfboards are kind of going the route of the (Ford) Mustang and Fender guitar" in Japan, Magee said. "They're just being snapped up. The American pop culture deal is a real infatuation with them."

There are six surfing museums in California, two in Hawaii, three on the East Coast and two in Australia, Ryan said.

Magee's museum is the only one in Texas. It also is one of the biggest and best surf museums in the world, Ryan said.

"He has exquisite stuff," Ryan said. "Everything's authentic. ... He's a discerning collector."

Magee, 46, has contributed to surfing history in a more personal way, too. In a 1969 contest, Magee won the state title in the 4-A men's division of the Gulf Coast Surfing Association.

In the early 1970s, Magee surfed in Texas and California as a member of the respected Weber competition team.

Magee's surf shop and museum are located at Alister Street and Avenue G -- only about five blocks from the beach in Port Aransas.

The museum is bulging with more than 100 vintage surfboards, surf-oriented comic books, old Hawaiian print shirts, surf music album covers, 60-year-old surfing postcards and an ocean of other surfing memorabilia.

Racks on one wall hold a 14«-footlong paddle board -- a wooden surfboard ancestor nailed together during the 1930s by California surfing pioneer Tom Blake.

Another one of Magee's favorite pieces is a Hobie surfboard that can be separated in two halves for easier transport. It was not an idea that caught on. Magee has heard that only seven to 10 of the boards were produced, making them all the more valuable.

Also in the Magee collection is a 50-pound solid redwood surfboard carved in the 1940s.

Another of Magee's favorites is a Mickey Dora model shaped by legendary surfer and surfboard shaper Greg Noll.

Some items in Magee's museum are for sale. Magee also has newly built surfboards for sale. Many of the new ones are long like the surfboards in the 1960s but are more maneuverable because they are lighter and differently shaped.

The museum has been popular with non-surfing tourists and locals as well as baby-boom surfers, Magee said.

Older surfers "are showing their kids what they started on," Magee said. ... They get a kick out of showing the young ones what they had to battle on."