FYI the ‘dunk hype’ is not new...this is a cycle that is repeating itself.
I know we are all pining over the days of yore when Dunks were easier to purchase...like 13 years ago up until like 6 months ago...that was called a ‘lull’ in the marketplace. IMO it hit a lull because they were doing too much.
I know I told y’all I been collecting for 25+ years, but truth be told I never really looked at it as ‘collecting’ until around 2003/2004. And that’s because in 2003/2004, Dunk hype was at a fever pitch and they tapped into the ‘baseball card’ notion of randomization and limited editions...dudes were trippin over themselves hitting every skateshop in the big cities trying to make a comeup on a newly released SB...they’d line up for blocks just for the chance to cop a random pair that they hadn’t even seen pictures of. And the numbers were manageable.
I spent many hours in lines in front of Supreme NYC with @solesupreme and @danposite and any other shop their friends told us about. We walked MILES to discover new spots and would consider ourselves ‘lucky’ if there were more than a pair or two on the shelves…
The dunk hype I remember was reaching its peak around the time that these came out...the Orchard Street dunks. I happened to be a youngster who spent his weekends on the Lower East Side walking block after block looking for new shops to discover...one of said shops decided to create their own dunk release. From what I remember, they bought 30 pairs of St. John’s dunks (white and red), painted the white yellow, made a couple of mods, then spread the shoes around the neighborhood for local kids to ‘discover’. Put them on top of lamposts, threw them up on electricity wires, etc. I’m sure I’m butchering some of the story, but once we heard that was the deal, @danposite and I went searching...we probably searched for a few weeks before we realized it was fruitless - there wasn’t Twitter back then so you never really knew if anyone actually found any.
A few pairs have popped up here and there over the years. I saw this one on eBay and brought back memories...none of what we are seeing is new. The numbers are new but the hype isn't.