How much does a surfboard really cost? You see discussions on the forums about the domestic made board price and imports, the molded board quality compared to the hand shaped hand laminated board etc. Should we pay as much as we do?

So I make hand shaped hand laminated…. How much do these boards really cost?

Surfing was once a very inexpensive endeavourer, at least when I got started. We didn’t wear wetsuits so you only needed an old pair of cut of jeans and a surfboard that you might have gotten used for 30 bucks. Find a way to get to the beach and have fun.

So lets say you find a board for $ 600. We won’t talk about wetsuits, board bags, extra fins, wax or the cost of parking at the beach. But if you have a $600 surfboard the first time you get that board wet it cost you $600. The second time?... $300. Third time $200 and the forth time $150.

So… if you surf this same $600 board every time you go to the beach and, you surf once a week on average by the end of a year, say you miss a couple weeks so at the end of the year you surfed your board 50 times. The board per surf session cost 12 bucks. That’s not much. My old 9’0 I’ve been surfing since 1992, I don’t surf it all the time of course but the overall cost per surf session on that thing by now is coming down to pennies.

Generally we keep our boards for a fair amount of time and surf them plenty. So if you look at the cost being spread out over the number of times that you surf the actual cost becomes something next to a hamburger lunch…. or even much less. I’d say that’s still pretty inexpensive for the amount of fun you have!

The 8’0 I’m riding in the pic below my son and I have had in the water enough for the cost of it to be down to about a nickel candy bar…. But you can’t get nickel candy bars anymore….

D.R.

Photo by David Puu