Roller Derby Skateboard
The first mass-produced skateboard was Roller Derby Skate Company’s “Skate Board” (without the “#10”). Roller Derby made this skateboard in their La Mirada, CA factory, and it was available nationwide at Roller Derby arenas in 1959,[1] and then in Thrifty Drugstores and Sears, Roebuck and Co. as the "Roller Derby Skate Board" in 1960. It was very similar to the first commercially available skateboard; the red, flat, straight-sided, steel-wheeled "Bun Board" which had been made and sold in Hermosa Beach by Alf Jensen since 1957.[2] In 1964 Roller Derby added 3 surfboard-shaped rubber-wheeled models similar to Makaha skateboards produced in 1963. These 3 skateboards were produced in their Litchfield, Illinois plant.[3] Only after 1963, when they were making other models, was it necessary to assign the “#10” model number to the little red skateboard. So collectors be twice warned. The Roller Derby Skateboard company was owned and operated by Barry Jacobs.
References
- ↑ “The Good The Rad and the Gnarly”, Ben Marcus, 2011, p47, http://www.axsgear.com/blog/vintage-skateboard-history/what-was-the-first-commercially-produced-skateboard/
- ↑ “A Letter from Don Guild”, Hermosa Beach Historical Society, 2009 http://www.hermosabeachhistoricalsociety.org/mar09newsletter.html
- ↑ “The Good, The Rad and the Gnarly”, 2011, Ben Marcus, p, http://www.axsgear.com/blog/vintage-skateboard-history/what-was-the-first-commercially-produced-skateboard/