You may have read the article in the latest issue of Whitelines about vintage snowboard collectors; ‘The History Boys,’ where we looked at some truly enormous collections. Much of the inspiration for the article came from one facebook group entitled ‘Vintage Snowboard Traders.’

Today the group has come back onto our radar because of one pretty heartwarming story that’s emerging. Eight hours ago at time of writing, one of its members – Niles Scherer from Vancouver – posted his entire collection up for sale alongside the following explanation:

A handful are spoken for & a couple I wouldn’t mind keeping.
But…..
I am not responsible enough yet to play snowboards anymore.
I have 10 days to come up with $7k or my house gets sold out from underneath me.

Sad tale – we can all relate to feeling the stresses of financial pressures sometimes. At least he has this collection of 60+ snowboards, and it’s likely with a bit of luck that he will be able to scrape the required moolah together for a bit of breathing space. But even that might not be necessary…

Friends eh? After a furious bit of scrabbling over the finer gems in his horde, one magnanimous follower posted the following comment:

And you know what? It actually worked. Since then donations have been pouring in to help out Niles – it’s hard to keep track of exactly how much, but within a few hours there already seems to have been over $400 pledged. He may even be able to save some of his collection along with his house.

It’s great to hear reports like this of fellow snowboarders rallying round each other. Could this be the first vintage snowboard story to go viral?

If you’d like to offer any help yourself, Nile’s PayPal address is [email protected]; maybe you’re a fellow board collector yourself, or just know what hard times feel like. Whatever, it’s nice to know the world can sometimes be, well, nice.