Three German names, one setup, and an Adidas deck nobody can source

Take the three brands one at a time, because each one carries its own dating evidence.

Berlinwood was founded in Berlin in 2002 by Timo Lieben, and makes hand-pressed five-ply maple decks in 29, 32, 33.3 and 36 mm. It is a brand in its own right, sold and documented through the Blackriver shop — a relationship that matters here, because if a Berlinwood graphic was ever produced under a licence, the Blackriver shop's catalog is the most obvious place for it to have left a trace. Berlinwood has a long record of named rider models — Elias Assmuth, Dimitri Schlotthauer's ASI Berlin Dimi, Jeldo Ulpts, Ramon Angelow — so the brand is plainly comfortable putting someone else's name on a deck. That is not the same as a sportswear licence.

Blackriver goes back to 1999, founded by Martin Ehrenberger, better known first for professional ramps and obstacles. Blackriver Trucks — the BRTs the poster identifies with an "obv" — date from 2010. The company also founded the Fast Fingers contest in 2000 and, by its own account, the first fingerboard park.

Winkler Wheels is the wheel brand of Martin Winkler, who started Munich's WeisswurstIssJam street jam in 2006. The poster writes that the wheels "aren't made anymore," with a "which I think" in front of it; nothing in the material confirms or contradicts that, and a community source dating the brand's start and describing its wheels hasn't been backed by anything first-party, so it isn't printed here.

Strip out everything that would be a guess and the confirmed list is short:

• The deck is identified by its owner as a Berlinwood. Its width is not stated.
• The trucks are identified as Blackriver. Model, generation and finish are not stated.
• The wheels are identified as Winkler. Whether they run bearings is not stated in the post.
• The grip is not original. The owner regripped it after receiving it.
• There is an Adidas element the owner reads as a collaboration, and he has found no documentation of one.

One soft date floor follows from the parts, and it is worth saying out loud as an inference rather than a fact: if those really are Blackriver trucks, and Blackriver Trucks begin in 2010, then this setup was assembled in 2010 or later. That says nothing about when the deck itself was pressed or printed. Decks sit in drawers for years, and gifted completes are often built from whatever the giver had.

The regrip is the quiet loss here. Tape and foam are dating evidence — a logo, a cut, a shop's house grip — and whoever next tries to place this board will not have it.

Here is the honest position: at the time of writing, no Adidas collaboration involving any of these three brands appears in the material available to this magazine. Berlinwood hasn't said. Blackriver hasn't said. The owner, who has the object in his hand, searched and came up empty, which is the single most useful data point in the thread — not because it settles anything, but because it rules out the easy answer that he simply didn't look.

That leaves several possibilities, and none of them should be stated as fact: a licensed release that never got written up anywhere searchable; a promotional or internal run that was never a retail product; a custom or one-off print; or something that isn't Berlinwood-originated at all and ended up on a Berlinwood deck. Picking one of those and running with it is how bad provenance enters the record and stays there for a decade.

What would settle it is physical. A Berlinwood press stamp or mold marking on the underside, any surviving packaging or sticker sheet, a shop receipt, and above all the person who gave it away — gifted boards usually come with one human who knows exactly where they came from.

Berlinwood has been pressing decks since 2002 and Blackriver has been building the furniture of the scene since 1999. Between them that is a very large body of product — rider models, colorways, runs tied to contests, runs tied to shops — and almost none of it was catalogued at the time by anyone whose job it was to catalogue things. The archive of European fingerboarding is mostly shop listings that got taken down, contest photos, and whatever people remember.

So an object like this one is not a trivia question. A deck with a sportswear mark on it, riding Blackriver trucks and Winkler wheels, is a specific moment in a specific country, and right now the only witness to it is a stranger's gift. The thread is still the best place for anyone who recognizes the graphic to say so; if someone has a shop listing, a contest photo or a box, that is the kind of evidence that turns a maybe into a line in the record.

Until then this magazine will call it what it is: an unidentified Adidas-marked deck on a confirmed Berlinwood, Blackriver and Winkler setup, with no collaboration documented and no date beyond the 2010 floor the trucks imply. We would rather print the gap than fill it.