Sharing Secrets to Scoring the Hottest Sneakers
NEW YORK — Sneaker Con, a gathering of shoe fanatics founded in 2009, brought 500 vendors and more than 19,000 people to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York late last year. The heart and soul of the event was the trading pit, an area in the back of the 840,000-square-foot center where sellers, mostly teenage boys, were talking and holding up their sneakers, looking for buyers. The experience was overwhelming, confusing (where are their parents?) and educational. Here’s what the sneaker experts had to say for themselves.
Posted — UpdatedNEW YORK — Sneaker Con, a gathering of shoe fanatics founded in 2009, brought 500 vendors and more than 19,000 people to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York late last year. The heart and soul of the event was the trading pit, an area in the back of the 840,000-square-foot center where sellers, mostly teenage boys, were talking and holding up their sneakers, looking for buyers. The experience was overwhelming, confusing (where are their parents?) and educational. Here’s what the sneaker experts had to say for themselves.
Ultimately it always comes down to craftsmanship, detail and the material used. The counterfeit industry is going to get as close as possible to the original materials, but they cut corners and use inferior products. Stitching is usually a big thing to check across the board, whether it is a hoodie or a pair of shoes.
A common difference amongst real from fakes is usually on inside size tags of sneakers, as well as on the box labels. The font style is 99.9 percent different, always. On Yeezys, for example, since they are some of the most counterfeited items I see, I look at the stitching; build structure; wherever it says “boost”; the font style; and the box.
I personally do not use eBay. Why I started @fake_education was by getting scammed on eBay.
Buy from somebody credible, from somebody reputable that has a reputation to uphold. To be 100 percent certain, buy from somewhere that has a return policy. Somewhere that if it gets out that they sold a fake, that it’s going to tarnish the image.
Anything made by Adidas: the Yeezys, NMD, Ultraboost. They’re selling off demand as well. For example, a general release NMD or an Ultraboost shoe holds almost no resale value, but that’s some of the most popular replicas on the market, because people are not even thinking that they’re buying a counterfeit. Whereas when it comes to Yeezys, they’re calling every lifeline possible to prove legitimacy. But when you come up to somebody with a pair that’s $180 in store and they’re giving it to you for, let’s say, $150, you just think you’re getting a good deal, right? Little do you know, they bought it for 60 bucks.
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Now it’s a lot of hype. Kanye West drops something and all the kids are running, and a month or two months later, the price just drops. We don’t buy into the hype stuff. We buy stuff that held its value over time. We have sneaker patents. We have one-of-a-kind Yeezy samples. We specialize in prototype, samples, vintage, rare samples.
Right now the market is all hype.
1985 Air Jordan 1s; we have the largest collection. That’s my favorite part of our collection, just because it holds so much history — it’s the first year of the Jordan. We have signed Julius Erving Converse sneakers. We have Yeezy samples, a few different colorways that have never been seen.
My sisters and I have over 6,000 pairs, but we stopped counting. Our dad started the collection over 25 years ago, and we took it over about five or six years ago.
It depends on the sneaker. Let’s say I were buying a 1985 Air Jordan: I would look at the yellowing, the cracking in the paint. If it’s metallic, that’s a big issue. You can use sneaker-cleaning products, and a lot of issues when it comes to yellowing just happen with age. So if you can get a dead stock pair from, like, ’85 or the ‘90s and it has no yellowing, the value is just astronomically more.
We store our collection in an air-conditioned, no-humidity storage room. If it’s a collection piece, you want to keep it away from a lot of lights — they could yellow it.
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The Nike Air Max 1. If we have to kind of go down to actual colorway, it would be the 2002 or 2003 Atmos colorway. It has a very safari, fun print to it.
The Nike Air Max 1s in the Amsterdam colorway. I’ve probably spent now nine or 10 years looking for them. For the longest time, I refused to pay the high prices for them. I broke down this year.
$1,500.
It’s tough. Today I try to be as safe as possible. I use eBay much more rarely. I am involved with the resell shop Stadium Goods here in New York City. I try to buy most of my shoes from there, just because they’re authenticated.
I generally look at sellers that have excellent feedback on eBay. I always look at people who write their name.
I do sometimes use Mylar bags. For people who’ve collected comic books out there, they use Mylar bags to keep them from getting the acid air or whatever it is from boxes. I also sometimes take out the insoles and throw them in with my bleach cycle, or I also use vinegar. You wash your underwear and your socks, but you’d never wash insoles. Those guys get pretty nasty.
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About 4,500 pairs. I’ve got a storage facility. I’ve been collecting since maybe 1996. So it’s been a long time to accumulate a lot of shoes.
Supreme Dunk High Stars. I just love the whole aesthetic of them. The embossed croc leather, the gold stars. The fact that they brought out three, it was very premium at that time.
Trends are moving so quickly nowadays that it’s hard to predict. A pair that you’ve hedged a lot of bets on and think that is going to be very hot, eight months later doesn’t end up being so hot because the kids don’t get into it. But if a brand puts enough money behind something, it’s generally a sure winner. So looking at 2018, we’re hoping that Nike comes back because I’ve had a tough couple of years. And Adidas either maintained or even improves on the previous year.
There’s lots of telltale signs: the box, the sticker tags, the inside label. If you know that there’s a certain number that comes out of a shoe and someone’s got 15, 20 pairs, you’ve got to think that’s a little bit suspect.
You can try to get lucky with a raffle or a queue. Try eBay. Or even like Sneak Con is the best way to get what you want and what you need. The prices might be inflamed, but think of it as an investment piece. If you love it that much, go for it. Why not?
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I started as a hobby when I was 13. And my parents just didn’t want to support it at first. So I just had to resell sneakers to make money to buy myself more sneakers.
You go to events like Sneaker Con and make a bunch of connections, and you just text them. You say, “Yo, how much is this? How much is this?” You just eventually get all of it.
Probably hoping Nike SBs. I know SBs died out a little, but hopefully they come back.
When you over and over look at the same shoe, you can just tell. And there is this Instagram @fake_education. He’s one of my boys; he does it.
It kind of gets hectic at sneaker drops. I used to camp out with my brothers all the time. I used to pay kids $50, $100, but I stopped doing that now.
I used to when I first started out. I used to get clean used shoes on eBay, buy them and clean them up and try to make them look close to new.
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Occasionally I just use a wipe. It could be a household wipe, a Crep Protect or a Jason Markk wipe. It’s pretty easy to take out the insole, and then I leave it out to air dry.
That’s driven by supply and demand. I think kids are hip and know when things are limited, and that’s really the impetus for a reason to buy. Whenever a Yeezy 350 comes out, people know that quantity is quite limited, and that is a driving factor.
I’ve been in the footwear industry so long, I don’t think I have to have paid for sneakers in the last 15 years. It sounds like I’m spoiled, but I’ve been very fortunate to be in this industry where I haven’t had to pay for my own shoes. I pay for shoes for my son.
He’s wearing Jordan 1s. He enjoys mixing them up, so he has one blue and one red. We bought two pairs to accomplish that.
It was a Nike Jordan. I think seventh or eighth grade. My parents were very strict, so it was unheard-of to spend a hundred dollars for sneakers. Between birthday money, Christmas money, Chinese New Year money and rolling up quarters and coins, I scraped up enough money. They took me to New Jersey, because there it was tax-free. We went to some mall, and I think I bought it at the Athlete’s Foot over 20 years ago. —
I basically study the past. I watch like a lot of old MTV, like rap videos and rock videos. I also do a lot of eBay, so I know what goes for what price and what to buy and what not. There are certain tags to look for, especially with Supreme. There’s a lot of fake Supreme going around. Study the tags. Study details. Stitching is everything, and the color of the shirt. Sometimes an item could be discolored color and it could be fake.
Go everywhere. Ask your grandma, ask your grandpa, ask your mom, your dad. Bring out that old concert T-shirt. Someone’s got it.
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