Welcome to Finders Keepers. This is a series meant to highlight overlooked pockets of surf culture and surfboard design through secondhand sales or trades. I’ve been buying used surfboards off of Craigslist for many years now and absolutely love the community of people and wide variety of boards I find there.
Finders Keepers is dedicated to sharing those stories, and riding those boards. On this episode I come across a very special surfboard that was designed by Michael Peterson. Initially I wrestled with the fact that the board was $1,500, as that would be the most money I’ve ever spent on a board. But ultimately, I decided to purchase the craft.
The journey takes us to meet up with legendary surf photographer Tom Servais who happened to be on the other end of this Craiglist purchase. Tom has been a surf photographer for decades and acquired this board from a surf shop on the gold coast of Australia during one of his trips there. He shares with us some great stories about getting the board, MP the surfer, and his thoughts on being a surfboard collector. We then are posed with the question of trying to find the actual “value” of surfboards.
Heading down to San Diego we check in with Eric “Bird” Huffman at Bird’s Surf Shed and gain some great insight into the conversation of surfboard values. In the end, I take the board to Lower Trestles on a fun day and enjoy riding it and experiencing the single-fin shape. I’d like to thank Justin Misch and Albe Falzon for allowing us access to Albe’s legendary MP footage from the movie, Morning of the Earth. They have remastered the film and you can watch it here. This is one of the greatest motion pictures capturing the pure love for surfing.
Editor’s Note: Tanner recently launched the site Outreach – where you can watch Finders Keepers – with Alex Kilauano. You can find more videos, here and follow them on Instagram, here.
