Old-Time Surfboards Ride Wave of Sentiment
Space is filling up fast. Bidders from around the world, including England, Japan, South Africa and France, have registered for Danny Brawner’s first classic auction.
Who is Danny Brawner? Well, it’s not so much who Brawner is as what he’s selling: surfboards. Old, restored surfboards.
Already, more than 400 potential buyers have signed up for the auction Dec. 14 at the Twin Palms restaurant in Newport Beach.
Brawner, 57, of Capistrano Beach hopes to sell 100 boards, half his collection, and cash in on surfing’s popularity, especially among long-board collectors, who are part of a small but growing cult.
“I’ve been working in surf shops for over 30 years,” Brawner said of his career dating back to the 1950s. He worked in the shops of such surf legends as Dale Velzy and Hobie Alter. “But I want to raise money to open a small surf shop and surfing museum.”
No one has ever auctioned off this many boards before, said Brawner, who believes the sale will “set some kind of standard for what these boards are worth.”
Steve Hawk, editor of Surfer magazine in San Juan Capistrano, said that although Brawner’s collection is not 100% original because he restores some of the worn old boards, Hawks still considers it among the world’s best surfboard collections.
Today, circa-1960s long boards by famous shapers such as Greg Noll, Phil Edwards and others can easily command $3,000 to $3,500, depending on condition. Surfer magazine’s latest issue highlighted how far the ceiling has been raised for surfboards that originally sold for $75 to $100.
For example, the magazine listed a 10-foot Pacific Systems Homes Swastika-model surfboard made in 1933 that sold for $6,500, and a Malibu Perpetual Trophy surfboard valued at $25,000. Even reproductions, made from the same balsa and redwood materials as the originals by Noll, have sold for $10,000.
Though not a shaper, Brawner made a mark in surfboard manufacturing as a “laminator and glosser” during surfing’s fledging years in the ‘50s.
Once a shaper finished cutting and sanding a foam “blank,” it was turned over to Brawner, who added a coat of colored resin to fiberglass cloth, waited until it dried, then sanded and sometimes repeated the process if it were a striped board.
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After Brawner retired in 1990, customers came knocking on his door carrying yellowed carcasses of old boards with faint logos, hoping he could restore them to previous glory. He charged $300 to $900 per board, and continues the craft today. But the restoration often increases the board’s value threefold.
“The older the better,” Brawner said. “But if they have one of the older logos, maybe a single-digit number on the board, even a permit saying it was from Newport Beach, that meant it’s from the ‘60s era.”
He spends days, weeks, even months sanding off the yellowed resin down to the old foam, putting on new pigment-dyed resin, waiting for it to dry, and going through the sanding steps again.
It’s a painstaking process, said Brawner’s nephew, Bernie Brawner, 40, of Capistrano Beach, a firefighter who likes to help his uncle restore boards.
“Customers don’t realize the amount of time he puts in restoring these old boards,” the nephew said. “For what he charges, people are getting a deal.”
Some boards were so unique that Brawner bought or traded for them, amassing more than 200 boards. He still has the prototype for the Lightning Bolt, Gerry Lopez’s popular Hawaiian board of the 1970s.
Critics have complained that he has “Brawnerized” boards, that is, ambitiously restored old surfboards that otherwise should have been junked.
But collectors, as in the antique furniture boom of the 1980s, can’t get enough of vintage surfboards. Some even turn to larceny.
When a buyer saw an ad for a Noll “da Cat” model a year ago selling for $1,500, he jumped at the chance to add it to his collection. The only problem was that it was a counterfeit. Police in Los Angeles arrested a 38-year-old photographer who had shaped boards years ago and turned to counterfeiting after a financial crisis brought a threat of foreclosure on his family’s home.
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In Orange County, shapers such as Hobie Alter in Dana Point first made surfboards from redwood. They were heavy wooden platforms that soon gave way to dense foam, which was much lighter.
By the mid-’60s, as the Beach Boys and other surf bands turned an arcane sport into a subculture, it seemed that everyone wanted a surfboard.
In 1967, though, the first short boards began appearing in the waves. Lighter, aggressive, acrobatic surfing upstaged the more fluid and easygoing long-board style. By the mid-’70s, long boards were gathering dust inside surf shops or fetching $25 at garage sales.
Many people point to the early ‘80s as the time when long boards made a return to the waves.
Popularity grew, and surfboard makers began introducing lightweight, maneuverable long boards. The revival of the long-boarding style also saw a renewed interest in the originals.
Brawner’s career has come full circle. He said now that he’s “so old and been around so long,” he’s seeing customers bring in surfboards that he originally glassed, in need of restoration.
Proceeds from the auction’s $20 bidder’s fee will be donated to the Surfrider Foundation, a private, nonprofit, ocean-conservation group based in San Clemente.
Those interested in attending the auction can order a bidder’s packet by writing Danny Brawner Surfboard Auction, P.O. Box 16092, Newport Beach, CA 92659, or by calling (714) 675-8926.