Buy a surfboard in Bali, sell it before you fly

Most people who buy a surfboard in Bali sell it again before they fly. So the board does not cost you its price. It costs you the gap between what you paid and what you sell it for, and on a fairly priced used board that gap is small. The rental, meanwhile, is charged for every day you keep the board. That is why a long stay tips towards buying.

1. 1

   Step 1: Days 1 to 3: rent, and look

   Rent for the first days and surf the breaks you expect to surf most. A beach break in Canggu and a reef on the Bukit want different boards, and a few sessions tell you which one you are buying for.

2. 2

   Step 2: The first week: buy

   Buy near where you are staying, check it in daylight before you agree a price, and pay once you have held it. A board across the island costs you half a day to see.

3. 3

   Step 3: The weeks in between: surf it, and keep it dry

   Seal any ding the day it happens. An open ding lets water into the foam, and water in the foam is the one thing that takes a board's resale price to nearly nothing.

4. 4

   Step 4: A week before you fly: list it

   Put the volume, clear photographs and the day you leave in the listing. A board listed the day before a flight sells at whatever somebody will pay that day.

5. 5

   Step 5: The last days: sell it, or sell it to a shop

   If nobody has bought it, a surf or rental shop that buys boards pays cash on the spot. It pays the least, because it has to sell the board on, and that is the price of leaving it late.

Used boards in Bali are sold in five places. What separates them is whether you can tell, before you ride across the island, that the board fits you and is still for sale.

Many of the boards on SurfPoint today were found on Facebook Marketplace and copied here with their numbers. Each one says so on its page, and its contact button opens the original post, so you reach the seller the same way you would have there.

What is for sale follows the waves nearby. Kuta and Legian are the learn-to-surf beaches, lined with rental stalls and surf shops, and they carry the most soft tops and ex-rental boards on the island. Canggu is where many travellers stay for the beach breaks, and where most used boards change hands: funboards, midlengths, fish and the shortboards of people moving on. Uluwatu and the rest of the Bukit face reef, so boards sold there run to shortboards and step-ups.

So buy where you surf. A step-up bought in Uluwatu is the wrong board for a week of small beach break in Canggu, and the drive between the two can take an hour and a half each way in traffic. Every used board in Bali can be filtered by area, and each area has its own page.

Agree the price with the board in front of you. Press along the rails and around the feet for soft spots, look for water in the foam, and read the volume off the stringer yourself: how to check a used surfboard walks the whole board in ten minutes. Prices in the groups are written in a shorthand, 3.5jt for three and a half million rupiah, and what a used board costs in Bali shows how to read them.

Pay in cash, in rupiah, once you have held the board. SurfPoint takes no payment and holds no money, so nothing sits between you and the seller, and nothing needs to: never send a deposit for a board you have not seen, which is the scam that comes up most. If you change money for it, use a licensed changer. UK government advice says those carry a Bank Indonesia logo and a QR code, and that unlicensed ones may short-change you.

Many visitors get around on a rented scooter, and a scooter carries a board in a side rack. Ask for one when you rent the scooter. The longer the board, the more it catches the wind on the rack, which is one more reason a 9 foot longboard is hard work here. A shorter board goes inside a car with a seat folded down, if you ask the driver first.

Check your licence before you ride. The UK government's travel advice for Indonesia says a UK licence alone is not enough to drive there, that visitors need an International Driving Permit, and that moped and motorbike accidents in Bali have risen sharply, some of them fatal. Other countries' licences have rules of their own. Check too that your travel policy covers you on a hired scooter, and what it says about riding one you are not licensed for at home: who pays when you get hurt surfing in Bali goes through it.

Give it a week. When you list it, set the day you fly as the date it is available until: the board's page shows it and buyers can filter by it, so nobody messages you the day after you have left. Selling a used board so it actually sells covers the photographs, the price and the meeting.

If you would rather take it home, the board fee and the bag often cost most of what a used board is worth. Flying home with a board you bought in Bali has the arithmetic.