Shopping on eBay always feels slightly scuzzy. Let’s put it this way: if eBay were a restaurant and you had a date you wanted to impress, you would steer clear. eBay aspires to be the online version of an auction house, but really, it just has the ambiance of a cut rate garage sale that has a bunch of dirty toys no one would ever buy.

Anyway – the point of the lesson is not that eBay’s merchandising could use some spiffing up, the point is that you can come across some real surfcraft gems on eBay.

Take, for example, this Bing Australian Foil model. The listing claims the board is a Rolf Aurness model, but I think that’s incorrect. According to Bing’s own website, the Australian Foil (also known as the Oz Foil), is associated with Aussie surfer Keith Paull. This is also supported by Stoked-n-Board’s Bing entry, which is probably the most comprehensive for any brand on the entire site, and worth a look if you’re at all curious about learning about older surfboards. (Has tons of pictures of fins, too, which I find extremely helpful and cool!)

Either way the board looks like it’s in great condition. It’s listed at 7′0″, and it’s found in Florida. There’s a cool post on Bing Surfboards fan site Classic Bing Surfboards that shows a picture of the Bing van that Keith Paull and co used to tour the East Coast. I’m wondering if that’s not how the board ended up in Florida! The entry also claims the board was shaped in 1970, which matches up to the production years for the Australian Foil on Stoked-n-Board (1968 – 1972).

Check out the eBay listing here, and enjoy a nice dose of Australian late 60s transitional board goodness, brought to you by your friends at Shred Sledz, the world’s authority on self-indulgent, semi-coherent blog posts about the wonderful world of vintage surfboards!