There was a Franklin Gothic Contour in the old Image Club Letterpress 6.0 CD. I think that was just like this.

I can see now that your sample is much heavier weight. Here is the ITC Franklin Gothic Contour sample showing the same word:

do you have anymore letters, jasonly? I'm not convinced that this one is Franklin.... the 'R' just doesn't look Franklinish to me. all the Franklins I've been able to find have a narrower R with a leg that's closer to vertical. and I don't think it was expanded optically -- I tried taking FG and expanding it and it didn't look like this.

Check the bold/heavy weights of Akzidenz Grotesk or Trade Gothic.

did that, Marc ... the waist on AG's R is too low (and besides that, the E is wrong), and this is the boldest weight of TG I could find that even resembles the sample, and it's also wrong.

any other ideas?

Looks to me like an old photo-lettering font called Comstock. I'm unaware of a digital version.

Jasonly, could you tell us where the sample was taken from? I was thinking it from RIDE Snowboards, perhaps?

nice work, Patrick! that's exactly it.

it seems as though 'comstock' was a generic term for an inline typeface. does anyone know if this particular 'Comstock' was based on an existing non-inline sans?

According to Mac McGrew in American Typefaces of the Twentieth Century, Comstock originated from the Inland typefoundry in 1902 and was later revived by ATF in 1957. It used to be commonly available from sources like VGC and rub-down type libraries.

I think it became obsolete (along with outline styles of fonts) because it's so easy to simulate this style with digital type and graphics software.

I presume the generic term derives from the typeface name.