This Billys’ advert features their Fab Feb Sale with Blanks at £19.99 and various “surplus” decks at £29.99. Free griptape and Powell rails (or similar) with any deck over £40. “That’s about 13 quidsworth free.” They were also selling skate T-shirts at £9.99 which sounds more like the death throws of HSC in 2005.
I’d always associated blank decks with a slightly later stage in the skate market, but here they are being advertised right at the start of 1990. On a similar point, the Skateboard Gang video advert from a company selling in US dollars would have been largely ignored at the time, but one line in it stands out to me now: “FOR THE FIRST TIME — the top skateboard companies appear together in the same video.” There are probably several other examples of videos featuring riders from different companies as old as this, or older (please feel free to suggest examples), but despite that 411 is often credited with pioneering the idea rather than just making a success of it.