I’ve been waiting for a chance to post a Liddle board, but even my compulsive Craigslist trawling hasn’t yielded much in the way of results. I was surprised to stumble across this board – mis-labeled and mis-priced, although the lofty price seems to be entirely by accident, given that the poster probably doesn’t have any clue who Liddle is – on Craigslist in North Carolina.

Greg Liddle has been shaping for decades now, and he is famous for his displacement hulls. Displacement hulls are known for their ability to generate massive amounts of down-the-line speed, and they prefer clean, long pointbreaks (then again, don’t we all?). Here’s a cool little Surfers’ Journal feature on hulls and Liddle, and Liddle also has written a great history of how his designs came to be on his own website.

There are other hull practitioners, too, notably Shred Sledz favorite Marc Andreini, and Mandala’s Manny Caro. Andreini’s boards are known to be a little more forgiving than Liddle’s, which can be tough to surf for those who are not accustomed to them.

The board pictured here looks like an early Liddle model. The outline is very different than anything available in Liddle’s current lineup, which you can find here on his website. For starters, this board has much more of a pulled in nose, and the pintail seems quite dramatic and less rounded-off than Liddle’s current designs. The board pictured here looks almost like a straight up gun, especially given that it’s 9′ in length. I’d be curious to see more pictures of the bottom to see if it has any of the “belly” (convex shape towards the front of the board) that is one of the staples of a displacement hull design. The hole in the fin for a leash attachment suggests to me that it was made sometime in the 1970s, but I can’t be certain.

It’s extremely expensive at $700. Like I said, I get the impression the poster doesn’t know what he has and he’s just making up prices as he goes along. Either way, it’s a cool example of an older board from an extremely well-regarded shaper, and an unusual shape to boot.

You can check it out here.