The Craigslist Free Surfboard and Wetsuit Essay Contest: Evolution of an Idea
Ah heck, do I really have to read all this, can’t you just show me
the winners or all of the submitted entries?
I’ve always been a big fan of the “guilt-free sale”. Rather than try to squeeze every penny from the selling of used stuff, it’s much more relaxing and satisfying to just price it so cheap that it sells instantly and the buyer walks away happy regardless of the quality of the item purchased.
My first big guilt-free sale was back in 1989 or so. I had a 1978 Dodge Colt station wagon that I had just run into the ground.
The front passenger door was crushed in from a sideswipe in a parking lot so if you wanted to sit shotgun you needed to crawl across the drivers side seat. The front passenger side also has a piece of plexiglass as a window ( the other one shattered in the accident} and duct tape along the top to keep the rain out because the door was no longer flush with the frame. Additionally, for some reason the car could not go more than about 35 miles per hour any more. It was an automatic and it still seemed to shift through all the gears, which made the 35 maximum speed even stranger. It also burned or leaked oil at the alarming rate of one quart per fill up. Even weirder; it still passed smog! Finally done with the car and ready to move on I decided to sell it at our family’s garage sale. I put a sign on the car that read “$50″.
Early on a man came up and asked if the car sale was real. He asked the usual question; what’s wrong with it? What’s wrong with it? Isn’t it obvious? The better question would be what’s NOT wrong with it as it would be a much shorter list. After thinking it over he offer me $25. I couldn’t believe he was haggling over a $50 car! Part of me was a bit pissed, yet a part of me was also intrigued and amused at the sear absurdity of it all. So I countered with $35 and he took it. He gave me the cash and I singed over the pink slip. He stated it up and drove away in all it’s puttering, slow motion glory.
If the car would have blown up a hundred yards down the road, I would not have felt any guilt or responsibility. On the other hard, he would not have felt ripped off or duped. Neither one of us would feel bad. I knew I was selling a high risk junker car and he knew he was buying a high risk junker car and the price reflected that reality.
And that is the essence of a guilt-free sale.
Another Car Bites the Dust
My next big guilt-free sale was in 2003-ish. I had an 1987 Mazda station wagon that looked great but was just a nightmare to maintain. Statistically it should have been a low maintenance car but it was just one problem after another. After yet another $300 repair I just snapped. I drove it to the K-Mart parking lot on 41st avenue and put a sign on it: “1987 Mazda Station Wagon, Automatic, Runs, Air conditioning plus Cassette Stereo and Sunroof - $350.” This was around noon. By 12:45 I had 3 callers and one buyer. Over the phone he offered me $250. I told him he has got to be kidding…It’s a steal at $350, no way. He said OK and would meet down there at 1:30.
His English wasn’t very good so he gave me a piece of paper and asked to write down all the things that needed to be fixed. I believe I wrote that both CV joints on front are cracked, it leaked about a quart of oil per fill-up, the timing belt was ready to go, the front and back shocks were shot, it was a month past due on the registration, and a bunch of other stuff I can’t recall at the moment.
He paid cash and I transferred title to him. Two years later I would still see the car being driven around the East side. So it’s safe to assume that he felt he got a great deal. Another guilt-free sale.
My Big Ass Wetsuit Sale
The concept is simple: pick out a suit you like and put $10 cash or check through the driver side window.
Close Up of The Sign
The Birth of The Big Ass Wetsuit Sale
Fast forward to June 2008. I buy two new wetsuits per year so they tend to pile up quickly. Within five years I had another collection of ten used wetsuits. Since I retire them so quickly they are usually in decent shape. The last group of old suits and boards I sold at the flea market. This time I wanted to do something a bit more casual and fun. So I printed up a sign for my “Big Ass Wetsuit Sale”.
I pulled up in the morning to my usual spot at the Point. I hung the wetsuits along one side of my car using the rain gutter as a “pole”. I put a sign on the front and back windshield and cracked the passenger side window a few inches. Then I went surfing.
The concept was simple; pick out a suit you like and put $10 cash or check through the driver side window. A total honor system. Now could have someone just taken all the wet suits and stiffed me? Sure but why would they? My experience has been that people will elevate or lower their behavior based on the expectations of the system. You treat people as if they’re honest and decent and they tend to behave that way. Treat them like thieves and thugs and they will tend to behave that way as well. It’s not that we completely abandon our principles at the drop of the hat, we just quickly learn to adapt to any given situation. If, in a particular situation, kindness and generosity is punished on a consistent basis, you quickly learn the futility of being a nice person. The converse is also true.
My Big Ass Wetsuit Sale was in essence a little system. The rules of the system were clear. Pick out a suit you like and put $10.00 through the window. Since no one was watching the shop it was also clear that I would be relying on the buyer to be honorable and not just the steal all of the suits. It worked perfectly.
The first day I put out all ten suits and taped the signs to my window and went surfing for a couple hours. When I came back there were eight suits left and $20.00 cash sitting on my car seat
The second day I put out all eight suits, tapped the sign to my window and went surfing again. When I came back, there were six suits left and another $20.00 on my front seat.
I repeated this for two more days but didn’t sell and the more suits. The first four suits to sell were the newer RipCurl Elastomax wetsuits. The rest of the suits were mostly Hotline and older. Since Santa Cruz is a serious surfing town I figured I had already tapped out my potential customer base using the Big Ass Wetsuit Sale method. It was time to try something else.
You Have a Friend in Craigslist: The Rise of the Free Surfboard and Wetsuit Essay Contest
So I had six wet suits left plus a beat up surfboard. At this point I really didn’t want to sell the remaining suits and I would have felt a bit guilty and silly charging anything for the surfboard. It’s not that the board was unsurfable, it’s just that in a serious surfing town such as Santa Cruz the market would just laugh it at any price. However, for someone of little means, an out of towner, or a beginner, it would be quite the find.
So after thinking about it for a month or so it dawned on me; give away the wet suits and surfboard on Craigslist but use an essay contest format to make sure it goes to the most deserving people. This would eliminate any scumbag resellers and level the playing field a bit. I had no idea if anyone would even enter and was fully prepared to give away the whole lot to the one and only entrant. Much to my delight the entries started coming in within a couple of hours of posting the contest. After five days I had seventeen entries and closed the contest early. A few suggested that I post all the entries so everyone can read them. I thought this was a great idea and so I created this website. One entrant wanted to stay anonymous so I removed the name and nother entrant didn’t want theirs published because of it’s personal nature ( such a shame as it was a really nice poetic peice) so that one is just for my eyes only.
Below is the full text for the contest. There we more photos but I reduced the number here for space purposes.
Free Surfboard and Wetsuit Essay Contest
Have a beat up 6′1″ Twinzer fish shaped by the inventor himself, Wil Jobson. It’s got a sawed off nose patched with solar res, rot spots, a bit of delam, a shaky fin…basically the works. I surfed it to within inches of it’s life but it’s still got a bit of spunk left in it. Also got six used wetsuits. All are MT 4/3 men’s. Five are Hotline and one is a RipCurl.
New additions! I have four pairs of booties and a hood. The booties will fit a men’s size 9 or 10 foot. The nice looking pair in the top middle are nearly brand new and are a size 9. They may go separately or be paired with the wetsuits. Also have a size 2 Women’s Hotline wetsuit that was just added to the pot by a friend.
The whole set is FREE to the person who emails me the best reason on why they deserve the lot. You can have all or just some. Tell me what you want and why you deserve it. Punctuation, creativity, and entertainment value counts.
Have fun and the contest will end in seven days.
How Do You Define Success?
From my point of view the contest was a huge success. I got to read a bunch of interesting essays, meet some great people and have a blast doing it. The winners got some free stuff and everyone got a chance to participate in an interesting experiment that rewarded creativity, altruism and kindness. You can check out the winners here and you can read all of the submitted entries here. Enjoy!