Pokemon Santa Cruz Skateboards Are a Smash Hit With Resellers

News

By RC Staff

14 September 2023

Everyone loves ripping into a fresh pack of cards. You never know what you’re gonna get; it could be nothing, it could be something incredible. Why hasn’t that experience been adapted into every other product in the world? Imagine shopping at IKEA and picking up furniture booster packs? Or appliances being sold as loot crates? Earlier this week, the skateboard manufacturer Santa Cruz has made this dream a reality. They sold a limited number of skateboard decks in foil packaging. The designs inside were random, and the only way to know what you got is to rip it open. Let’s take a look.

Santa Cruz Pokemon Skateboard Blind Bags

Believe it or not, there’s a bit of crossover between skateboards and Pokemon. Well, there’s a crossover between Pokemon and everything really, it’s a massive IP, but earlier this year we covered the Bear Walker X Pokemon Company collab, which produced a new line of extremely popular skateboards.

Now we’re looking at another Pokemon skateboard collaboration. Santa Cruz Skateboards is an LA-based skateboard manufacturer founded in 1973. Since then they’ve built up a reputation as one of the best in the business, and are available through various retailers and taking part in numerous collaborations and special projects.

One of these is the “Blind Bag” Pokemon skateboard decks. This drop was special because buyers didn’t know what they’d be getting beforehand. Everybody would receive their decks wrapped in a foil package (very similar to booster pack material), which they would need to tear into to get their deck.

There are twenty different designs included in the Blind Bag collection. Fifteen of these are a standard “holo-foil” finish featuring some of the most popular Pokemon from the Gen 1 games, like Charmander, Bulbasaur, and MewTwo. Here’s a link for a full list of designs.

Additionally, there are five special and very limited designs. These are gold foil variants, depicting the Pokemon Pikachu, Gyarados, Eevee, Charizard, and Mimikyu. There are only 50 copies of each gold design from the Santa Cruz Pokemon collaboration, making them the rarest and most desirable decks available.

The Santa Cruz Blind Bag collection dropped at 6 A.M. Pacific on September 13. Decks were sold for $110 through the Santa Cruz site and certain local retailers.

Because of the brand’s reputation and the unique nature of the decks, this collection sold out very fast. As in, less than five minutes fast. Santa Cruz’s Instagram is full of irate commenters complaining about bots and resellers, which is a little ironic given the large warning on their site stating that bot orders will be canceled.

Actually, what’s really funny about this sale is the quantity limit. Santa Cruz limited orders to five decks per customer. Five decks? Did they explicitly want resellers to take advantage of the sale? If so, mission accomplished…

Santa Cruz Pokemon Skateboards Resell

Within 24 hours of the sale, many of these blind bags have gone on to resell. Right now, the average price of a Santa Cruz Pokemon Skateboard for sale on eBay is around $250 to $350. The vast majority of sales are for sealed bags, but some opened decks have traded hands for around the same amount.

As far as we can tell, there have been no sales recorded yet for any gold foil boards. Two sellers have listed both a gold Eevee and gold Gyarados deck, but they have them listed for $2,850 and $8,000 respectively. Will they sell for that much? Probably not, but it’s only been a day. We’ll have to wait and see what the true value for these gold decks shake out to be.

That’s all for today. If you missed out on this drop, maybe it’s time to join RC Elite. Members were given advanced notice of when the sale would go live, and knew what to look for and what to sell it for. For the lucky folks that bought a bag, they’re now looking at about $150 in profit per board, at a minimum.

Otherwise, subscribe to our newsletter for the latest breaking news and resell tips. Good luck and happy flipping!