The trucks on a €25 supermarket skateboard are made of plastic. Not cheap aluminium. Plastic. They pivot about five degrees and then stop, which means the board will not turn, which means the child riding it has to step off and pick it up every time they want to change direction. Two weeks of that and the board is behind the shed.
This is the biggest reason people here think they are bad at skateboarding. They are not. They were given equipment that does not work.
The toy shop board is why most people quit
A skateboard turns because the truck hanger rotates around an angled kingpin, squeezing rubber bushings as it goes. Lean left, the bushings compress, the axle steers. Plastic trucks have no bushings worth the name and no geometry at all.
The rest matches. Toy aisle boards run plastic wheels rather than urethane, which sound like a bag of spanners on tarmac and grip nothing, on a deck of laminated birch or a moulded shell. A ten year old on one concludes within a fortnight that skating is too hard.
The Tony Hawk 180 Wingspan at €39.99 from Smyths sits right on the line. Real maple, real trucks, real urethane wheels, and a single kick tail with no nose, which limits what the rider can eventually learn. It works. Plenty of what sits beside it in the same aisle does not.
What a real complete costs here
Three price points cover almost everyone.
€40 to €50. The Rocket Complete 8.0 at Sports Direct is the cheapest genuine maple board in the country, reduced from €58. The trucks are soft cast aluminium and bend off a bad kerb landing, but the deck is a full adult 8.0 inches and the wheels are 92a, softer and more sensible than boards costing three times as much. The Tony Hawk SS 360 at €50 covers eight to thirteen year olds at 7.25 inches.
€80 to €130. Where a first board should sit if you suspect the rider will stick with it. The Birdhouse Armanto Bubbles 8.0 at €110 from High Rollers is the pick: seven ply Canadian maple, a shape you can ride for twenty years, a real skate company behind it so parts exist. The Verb Reverb 7.75 at €79.99 from Crazy Monkey is the double kicktail option for a smaller rider.
€130 plus. For a child, the Creature Web 2 Relic Mini 7.75 at €130 is the best board sold here for ages six to ten, and one of the rare completes fitted with 83a wheels from the shop, so nothing needs changing.
Below €40 you are buying the plastic problem.
Deck width follows shoe size, not age
Length is close to irrelevant. Width is everything, because your feet have to sit on it.
Roughly: a size 4 shoe or smaller wants 7.25 to 7.5 inches. Sizes 5 to 7 want 7.5 to 7.75. Size 7 upwards wants 8.0 and above. A wider deck is more stable underfoot and slower to flip; a narrower one flips quickly and feels twitchy at speed.
Eight inches has been the default adult width for over a decade. There is no beginner size to graduate from. The deck size finder takes shoe size and height and returns a width.
Almost every complete comes with the wrong wheels
Look at the durometer on any complete under €150 and you will find 95A, 99A or 100A. That is a skatepark wheel. It is small, hard, fast on smooth concrete and designed to break traction predictably when a rider wants it to.
On an Irish street it is the wrong tool. Our roads are surface dressed chipseal, loose stone rolled into bitumen, so the texture is coarse and there is always grit on top. It rains. Moss grows on the shaded side of every estate road by October. Hard wheels stop dead on a chip of gravel and let go without warning on damp tarmac. You get thrown off by nothing at all, twice, and you decide skating is dangerous.
The fix is €30 to €40 for a set in the 92A to 95A range, or 78a to 83a if the board is mostly for getting places rather than tricks. It is the best money in the whole hobby. Budget for it at the same time as the board rather than treating it as an upgrade.
Where to buy it and what each shop gives you
High Rollers at 65 Aungier Street in Dublin 2 will build the board and answer the questions you did not know to ask. Delivery €6.50 anywhere on the island, free over €150, collection free. That twenty minutes of conversation beats any price difference.
Smyths does free two hour click and collect and free delivery over €25, and returns mean walking into a shop rather than posting anything. Their listings often omit deck width and construction, so ask.
Sports Direct is cheapest by a distance under house brands, €6.99 delivery with no free threshold.
Every shop is broken down on the shops page. If a British site tempts you, run it through the import duty calculator first, because since July 2026 a UK order carries duty, VAT and a handling fee.
Helmets, and the wrist guards nobody wants
Buy a helmet. €30 to €50 for a certified one, and for a child it is not a discussion.
Wrist guards are the ones people refuse and the ones that matter most in the first month. The reflex when you fall backwards is to put a hand down flat, and a distal radius fracture is the most common skateboarding injury by a wide margin. €20 a pair. Wear them for four weeks while you learn to fall, then decide. Knee and elbow pads are optional on the street and sensible at a park.
A used deck is fine, used bearings are not
Second hand boards on Adverts and Facebook Marketplace are decent value if you know what to look at.
Check the tail where it drags. Worn through to a sharp thin edge, or plies separating at the nose, means the deck is finished. Look for stress cracks across the middle. Trucks are close to indestructible unless bent, so sight down the board from the tail and check both axles sit parallel.
Bearings are the part not to inherit. They cost €12 to €20 new, they are packed with grit after a wet winter, and a seized set makes a good board feel like it is being ridden through sand. Replace them and start clean.