Surfer’s vintage Velcro find

It was an unusual thing for his wife to bring home.

Newport Beach surfer Shawn Maxfield said his wife, Michelle, usually has modest tastes, so he was surprised when she brought home what looked like an expensive handbag.

“I said ‘Honey, I know you’re Swiss and I’m a banker, but we can’t afford that,’ ” Maxfield joked during an interview Tuesday.

Shawn found out that Michelle hadn’t paid a dime for the bag ? her father had found it while clearing out his old San Diego ware- house. The discovery piqued Shawn’s interest, and he decided to have a look for himself.

After a little searching, he found something that took him back to his days surfing Blackie’s Beach: about 500 Velcro wallets made by Hang Ten.

For those who don’t remember, Hang Ten was a Seal Beach clothing company from the 1960s that popularized the Velcro wallet and created some of the early surf trunks that came to be called board shorts.

Famed surfer Duke Boyd ran the company through the 1970s until hitting a snag in the early 1980s, eventually closing its doors and later reopening in New Jersey. The company doesn’t currently operate any retail stores on the West Coast.

The clothing line was a success for surf shops in Newport Beach and Huntington Beach, and Maxfield said he remembered nearly all his friends having one of the Velcro wallets, which sold for about $3 to $5 in the 1970s.

As it turns out, an unpaid bill created the inadvertent time capsule in the San Diego warehouse. Maxfield’s father-in-law, Alfons Hollenstein, manufactured the wallets for Boyd but didn’t ship them because he was still owed money.

Planning to hold onto them until he received payment, Hollenstein stored them in the back of his warehouse and eventually forgot about them.

When he finally uncovered the wallets, Maxfield said, most were in mint conditions, despite a little dust and a few black widow spiders nesting in the box. He said he took the wallets home, cleaned them up and started calling area surf shops about his discovery.

“They were just the thing to have back in the day,” said T.K. Brimer, owner of the Frog House surf shop in Newport Beach. “Velcro was a new item on the market, and it was something that we could use every day.”

For many, Hang Ten was the first “core” brand made for and by the surfer community. The two golden feet embroidered on the product’s shorts, wallets and shirts gave the person wearing it credibility with other board riders.

“Hang Ten was among the first clothing lines that came looking for the demographics of the surfer,” Brimer said.

Maxfield said he plans to sell his collection of vintage wallets on his website, www.maxfieldprovisions.com, but he wants to keep the items within the surfing community. He also wants to save additional wallets for future generations and has donated others to the surfing museums throughout the state.

“I want to give something back to the surfing community,” he said. “There’s just something about the wallets’ earth tones, their funky designs and those darn little feet.”dpt.12-goodold-BPhotoInfo771PSBKS20060412ixl1luncMARK DUSTIN / DAILY PILOT(LA)Shawn Maxfield sits with a few of the 500 vintage Hang Ten wallets he found in his father-in-law’s warehouse. He plans to sell the billfolds on his website.