Someday, Andy Maske plans to own every skateboarding sticker from every skateboarding company that existed from 1986 to 1995. For Maske, this time frame was the "heyday of skateboarding" and he honors it via his Web site, skateboard-stickers.com, which is possibly the world’s largest online collection of vintage skateboard stickers.
"Rather than put my stickers into photo albums or frames, I decided to make a Web site to allow people all around the world to come look at my collection," says Maske. "After making my site, I have not found any other site that contains as many vintage old skate graphics as mine."
Maske, who lives in Bay View, built his site in May of 2007 and today, it contains thousands of vintage skateboard company stickers including Vision, Thrasher, Gordon & Smith, Black Label, Santa Cruz, Vans and many more. The site is organized according to brand and easy to navigate.
Skateboard-stickers.com is a virtual museum, but Maske sells his doubles on eBay. The prices vary, but a single sticker can sell for $400.
"Stickers, and vintage skate stuff in general, is in high demand for a couple of reasons," says Maske, 38. "People obviously love to reminisce about things from their past, but in the case of vintage skate stuff, it's even more of the case."
Maske says skateboarding became more mainstream in 1995 and lost the verve and originality of ‘80s skateboarding culture. He says the ‘80s were a great time for skateboard graphics because the concepts were fresh and new.
"Skateboards, and skateboard graphics were evolving, updating and changing constantly," says Maske. "Some of the graphics that were created back then are still just as popular and in demand today."
During this era, many of the graphic designers were professional boarders or companies hired legendary artists to create all of their graphics. Artist Jim Phillips was the mastermind behind Santa Cruz’s art and Vernon Courtland Johnson (VCJ) created most of the imagery for Powell Peralta.
Maske started skateboarding in 1986, and later started running the skateboard section of a bicycle shop. Through this job, he started to receive free stickers, which he saved in a shoebox. Later, he worked at the now-defunct Turf Skatepark where he became a sponsored skateboarder and collected even more stickers. Other sponsored skaters traded Maske stickers for a ride home from the skatepark.
"After years of skateboarding at different skateparks, and meeting all kinds of people, these boxes of stickers just kept growing and growing," says Maske.
Skateboarding can be a rough sport -- boards and gear get thrashed and replaced -- so a lot of ‘80s skateboard memoirs are long gone. Maske’s stickers, however, remain as material reminders of this celebrated era.
"In the mid-to-late ‘90s, skateboarding became a big money industry that everyone wanted to jump on, and get a piece of, but I feel that the graphics’ originality and creativeness fell off greatly around that time," says Maske. "I’m not alone in my thoughts, which this is why people are in such demand of the older, vintage stickers."
Molly Snyder started writing and publishing her work at the age 10, when her community newspaper printed her poem, "The Unicorn.” Since then, she's expanded beyond the subject of mythical creatures and written in many different mediums but, nearest and dearest to her heart, thousands of articles for OnMilwaukee.
Molly is a regular contributor to FOX6 News and numerous radio stations as well as the co-host of "Dandelions: A Podcast For Women.” She's received five Milwaukee Press Club Awards, served as the Pfister Narrator and is the Wisconsin State Fair’s Celebrity Cream Puff Eating Champion of 2019.
