(2/2) QuickStrike
After looking at the link from ‘Savant’s Pick #4’, I have a better idea of what I might be on the lookout for today.
I just took my last bite of bagel and pushed the cream cheese down with my hot cocoa and nescafe. I toss the paper cup, then crumple up the wax paper the bagel came in - I look up at the clock. It’s 8:59:57.…3…2…1… I mutter a quick ‘Kobe!’ drop back and toss the wax paper as it bangs off the edge and drops into my trash can. It’s exactly 9am and the opening bell clangs. The markets are open.
Well. Kind of.
9am is when the financial markets open. But the sneaker market never sleeps. It’s online at all hours of the day and all hours of the night. They’ve made finding shoes extremely easy for someone with money to blow. But looking for deals - that’s a different story. That’s what I’m good at and that’s what I like to focus on. A shoe purchased for retail is no good to me…but a shoe under $60 is my sweet spot. I will buy just about anything if it’s under $60 and that’s because I’ve learned - through years of trial and error - that you can eventually find almost anything for under $60. (either that, or, I adjust my tastes based on the price I’m willing to pay…).
I love the hobby but I can be a real shark if the waters necessitate it. If I see something I can make a quick hundred on - I will do it. Without question. But if it’s something will require much time or effort, I’m out. My minimum flip amount used to be ‘double cost + $20’ to cover selling fees. But things have changed along with the market. I don’t mess with anything I can’t make $100 on - at this point - and that’s because there are so many goddam deals out there that I just don’t have enough time to focus on them.
Most dudes on Wall Street sit behind a super expensive vintage looking device called a ‘Bloomberg terminal’, which is named after Michael Bloomberg, who made his fortune hawking said terminals to every brokerage house in the world. They’re terribly primitive-looking - think a black MS-DOS screen with color-coded information - but what they do offer is the freshest data available to the market. I wasn’t any kind of big shot on Wall Street - I was middle office - so they definitely wouldn’t spring for a Bloomberg terminal for me (roughly ~$30k/year/person). I always wanted one, but I wasn’t important enough to get one. So I built my own.
My ‘Bloomberg’ terminal for the sneaker market is called ‘QuickStrike’ and it defaults to ‘eBayWatch’. It doesn’t give you all of the boring shit that is pushed by the majors. I’ve refined what surfaces based on 25+ years of loyalty to eBay and after looking at hundreds of thousands of pairs of shoes - I’ve deprioritized the major movers and lifted up the things that people (not corporates) actually seem to care about. Maybe one day I’ll reveal my filtering mechanics. This is a raw look into ending auctions, new BINs, and the odds and ends that make the sneaker market much more interesting than your typical StockX top 25 list. This is me - digging deep (programmatically) and I’m digging deep because the market is oversaturated and I’m tired of seeing the same stuff over and over again. I built it because I need to see what’s ending soon, what’s just listed, and what is flying under the radar…at THIS EXACT MOMENT. And I need to act NOW to snag what I need to snag.
QuickStrike started with eBay, but the sneaker market's bigger than one site. So it grew. ‘ShopGoodwillHunting’ digs through Goodwill's auctions for the stuff people overlook, thrift-store prices on shoes that shouldn't be there. And ‘Trainerspotting’ scrapes the boutiques, the shops that actually mark things down, and pulls every steal into one feed. Three terminals, same eye. Same tired-of-seeing-the-same-thing instinct that built the first one.
One of the funny things about developing the concept for this tool…I’m on a screenshare call with my buddy showing him a demo of how I coded a particular section and I see a pair that’s about to end at a crazy low price. I say ‘hold on one second’, click on the link, snipe the auction and resume the demo. My buddy stops me - ‘hey, what did you just do?’ Me: ‘I just won that auction’. Him: ‘why?’ Me: ‘Cuz it was a steal.’ This legitimately happened 3 times in my first 2 weeks of building this website out. Steals are everywhere you look - even GOAT debuted their own ‘steals’ website - but what about those ‘steals’ that are almost impossible to find?
I’m sure you’ve heard of the ‘Jordon’ thing from old eBay heads - plenty of people would list their auctions as ‘Jordon’s’ instead of ‘Jordan’s’ and those auctions would end WAY lower than those that were correctly spelled…since building this tool, I found that LaBron’s are a thing and Yezzy’s are as well. ‘Nikee’ and ‘Addidas’ have way more listings than you’d think. And even ‘Jorden’s’ pop up from time to time. eBay got smart, though, and decided that people shouldn’t even be able to search for those titles - they now autocorrect the search. So you can’t even find items with those titles…unless…of course…you’re using QuickStrike. Because QuickStrike hits the eBay API directly, there’s no such thing as an autocorrect on a search term.
Being that auctions aren’t as plentiful as they once were, almost everything seems to fly under the radar. I don’t mess around with the financial markets much any more, but when I did, the ritual of preparing to click that ‘Buy’ or ‘Sell’ button at just the right time gave me the exact feeling that sniping an auction on eBay still does today (and has since the year 2000, when I first joined eBay). It always makes me think of that line ‘…palms are sweaty/knees weak/arms are heavy…’ I need a calm environment - my eyes lock in, I’m signed in at my computer of choice, my brain starts shutting out the noises around me, my heart starts pumpin’ heavy, and I feel those goosebumps on the back of my neck…13 - I type in my top bid, then wait - 12, 11, 10, 9, 8 - I Click ‘BID’ - Message: ‘YOU ARE CURRENTLY THE HIGH BIDDER’, 3, 2, 1…’DETERMINING THE WINNER’…’YOU HAVE WON THIS AUCTION PLEASE PAY NOW.’
It’s hard to explain what even looking at this website does for me, but it puts me right back into my desk with my slicked-back hair and my Alfani suit on the tenth floor of 55 Water. The excitement is palpable and noise is loud and the rush of finding something no one even knows to look for is thrilling. Again, I call it QuickStrike. But there's no quick way to learn what's worth striking (you see what I did there?). That's kinda why you gotta take the long way around.