I'm not much of a retail consumer. I buy groceries based on how much I can save with my club card, I buy used cars with low miles and small engines, and I shop the clearance racks at clothing retailers, much to my girlfriend's chagrin. But when it comes to surfboards, I'm full-pop. I love their lines, finishes, and trippy fin configurations. A new board projects a limitless sense of possibility—the places I could take it, and the places it could take me—and I frequently pay a shaper more than the agreed upon amount for a custom board, regardless of how many weeks he stalled before finishing it. I've never felt good about haggling over the price of art, and to me surfboards are the highest form.

Not only are thrusters, longboards, fish, and rhino-chasers the foundation of our lifestyle, they're priced accordingly. Apart from Indo boat trips and vacation homes overlooking the Superbank, boards are the biggest expense we incur as surfers; so in this uncertain economy, we thought it might be a good idea to create a showcase where we could provide information about the surfboard options out there, as well as dispense some advice on how to communicate with the shaping community to get a great board every time you plop down some hard-earned cash.

Before we started, we posted a quick, three-question poll on SurferMag.com in order to get an idea what you were riding and why. We were surprised to learn that 58 percent of those who chimed in own four boards or more, and our jaws hit the ground when 19 percent of you claimed to own double that! It was heartening to see that 82 percent of you prioritized function (maneuverability, durability, and weight) over branding or price when choosing a board. And, though it's still the most important board in the vast majority of your quivers, the standard shortboard has fallen below the 50 percent mark in the “most important stick you own” category, a sign of the continued impact of the reemergence of retro shortboards and classic logs.

So we partnered with as many shapers as we could to create a surf-shop boardroom you could roll up and fit in your pocket. Full disclosure: so you skeptics don't think we tried to pull a fast one over on you, the shapers featured in this guide paid to be here, but I assure you, we charged them only enough to cover our costs. Our goal was to expose as many surfers as possible to shapers from all over the coastal world, not to get rich quick. It's our belief that your next magic board isn't necessarily going to come from the guy down the street—though it might—and if we help you find it, we've done our job.

Think of this as a dating service. We're here to connect you to your soul mate—she just happens to have an extruded polystyrene core...

JOEL PATTERSON