Monday, 29th May 2023
Pretty sure I shared this before, but this is wild to me. As much as I'd love to suddenly unload ~75 pairs for a single pair...I'm just not sure how *worth it* it actually is. I have trouble when it comes to spending more than a few dollars difference on certain things (shoes in particular)...to me this is absolutely NOWHERE NEAR the same value. Selling each and every pair of those individually looks to me like it'd be almost a full 2 for 1.
But.
Then again.
I don't track the price of OG 1's. Nor am I all that interested in them.
What do you think? Crazy trade or what? Which side would you rather be on?
Top Comment: The amount that people are willing to pay for DS 1s is getting insane. I’d rather have the 1s than 75 pairs that you could buy literally any second from any app.
Tuesday, 30th May 2023
*sigh*
Is it that time of year again? The time when we argue the merits of real vs. fake? The time when everyone throws their (strong) opinions out there in hopes of letting everyone know how they feel? Everyone just wants to be heard. Amirite?
*sigh*
As much as I hate a billion-dollar media company asking engagement farming questions multiple times a day, I'm not *fully* above it. In the interest of also being heard, here's my unsolicited opinion on the topic (which has likely changed over the years):
- If you want to wear shoes as a 'sneakerhead', wear whatever the hell you want. But don't front. Fakes are fakes. Fake rare are still fake. But don't try to pull anything over on anyone. And I'm too old to *actually* care about what anyone has on their feet - real or fake.
- If you want to be a bonafide 'sneaker collector', and you want to show off a 'collection' of fakes, tho, there really isn't much beauty in a collection that took nothing more than a readily available 'buy it now' click that cost little more than $100...
As I've been rolling along my 'journey' as the Sneaker Savant, my views have changed several times over the years. But I think the most important thing I've been trying to internalize is that there really *is* a difference between a collector collector, a wearer collector, and a wearer wearer.
- 'Collector Collector': draws VERY clear lines between collectible and wearable. Wouldn't dream of wearing their collector items on foot. Fakes are entirely unacceptable.
- 'Wearer Collector': draws rough lines between collectible and wearable. Sometimes a collectible shoe could be worn. Sometimes a wearable shoe becomes collectible. Is kind of ambivalent on the whole 'real vs. fake' argument as it doesn't really impact them.
- 'Wearer Wearer': wears everything. Real/fake/collectible doesn't matter. They just love wearing their shoes.
IMO, I fall in that 'Wearer Collector' category. But most of the stuff I'm trying to do in the realm of The Sneaker Savant is in that 'Collector Collector' category.
(Please agree with me. I need the validation. And I need to keep riding the algorithm that rewards low-hanging fruit.)
Top Comment: sankofafw artificial scarcity has gotten us to the point where we are at Vegas tugging on that one-armed bandit and happily sharing in our community our losses. some of us appreciate the aesthetic of winning and thus found an alternate Vegas where we are able to obtain that when not even the pros can discern is not a win. Me? I don't even like Vegas, but if someone wants to get a win the way they want to and it makes them feel happy, good for them.
Wednesday, 31st May 2023
I suppose, as a crypto/NFT maxi (that’s what they call people like me), I should probably distill this whole dot.swoosh Nike ‘our force 1’ thingy (or whatever the hell it’s called) for those who might be trying to figure it out…
First…I think whatever is going on is incredibly convoluted. I don’t think their messaging is all that clear nor is it helpful, even for a maxi like me. I have no idea what their goal with this whole thing is. I saw some video of (what looked to be) a dev on the project talking about it and she looked so absolutely unenthused I almost fell asleep.
Second…it's clearly late. They’re a good year from the peak of the (first) bull run, they don't appear to be offering anything of substance *just yet* and they actually *don’t* accept cryptocurrency payments (yet?).
Third…these are going to be nothing like the Flying Formations/DOAF. There were only 120 of those…there are something like 300k of these SO FAR and they haven't been opened up to the general public yet. Anyone who thinks spending $19.82 on a digital shoebox is gonna somehow turn it into a pair of $15k shoes is misguided. I don’t think the intention with these is the same as it is with many of the other projects (but what is the intention?)
Fourth…I have no idea as to where this is going, nor am I all that invested. A lot of these projects *are* legit, but there are far more that are little more than corporate cash grabs, and Nike certainly isn't above a cash grab..
Fifth...The whole ‘talk soon’ bit at the end of the email makes me think that Nike hired one dude to lead the whole thing and he’s the guy who writes the (convoluted) emails and closes every email he writes with ‘talk soon’. One person writing unclear emails to hundreds of thousands of customers buying 'virtual' shoeboxes does not bode well for me.
I’d like to be hopeful…as I think anything that goes wrong here reflects poorly on the ideology and the NFT space as a whole, but I dunno. Nike has certainly done a great job of bringing new and innovative products (and marketing) to the forefront, so I am prepared to be surprised. In the meanwhile, what's $19.82 for a moonshot?
Top Comment: vanderhause Whatever their plan is, they aren’t revealing it just yet. I do think they’ve looked at the space over the last few years and should have an idea of what they’re trying to build. Maybe something similar to The Hundreds’ Adam Bomb project where those holders will get access to different or limited items.
Imagine .swoosh only SNKRS raffles. That would go a long way in eliminating bots and people with tons of accounts.
And with the recent rumblings of them trying to update their sneaker lineup to keep it from becoming stale they now have what is essentially hundreds of thousands of users who paid money for some sort of access. That’s a pretty good focus group to run things by.
Thursday, 1st June 2023
The weekend before I was set to start my senior year of college at UC Santa Cruz, I was visiting a friend in Los Angeles. We went out drinking pretty hard the night before, and when I woke up around 9 am, I had around 30-something missed calls on my LG flip phone. All from my mom. I called her back and she was in a frenzy: “DO NOT GET ON THAT PLANE TODAY”
“Huh?”
“Turn on the TV”
It took me a few minutes to understand what was going on, but once I did, I understood why she was in a frenzy. My mom, who had grown up in Red Hook, Brooklyn, had literally watched the twin towers being built as she was growing up…and on this morning, she had watched them fall before her eyes.
The rest of the story isn’t really related to where I’m going here, but long story short - I did not get on any plane on September 11th, 2001, and the start of my senior year was off to a different start…this was the year ‘terrorism’ hit pop culture.
Coincidentally, this was also around the time that I discovered Netflix. And their DVD mailing service. And I lived about a block away from a Blockbuster. So, every night, I’d usually throw on a DVD regardless of what was going on. Homework? DVD. Drinking? DVD. Friends? DVD. Girls? DVD. At the beginning of some of these DVDs…some of them started popping up with this commercial thing about piracy…and how pirating DVDs was actually funding terrorism…
Now…I don’t know about all of that - I mean, at the time, I was a young, impressionable 21-year-old so I suppose anything could be possible - but looking at it now, it seems to me that the movie companies were riding the wave of ‘terrorism’ and somehow pushing their own agenda on the situation. I can see how movie piracy can hurt the film industry. But terrorism?
So…sneakers. This made me think of fakes/reps/bootleg arguments we all love to have. It made me wonder…do fakes actually *hurt* or *help* corporations?
I think I can expand upon this a bit more, later on, this week or next, but I really just wanted to get a gauge on where people stand on the topic…because, to me…these fakes/reps/bootlegs actually *benefit* the brands more than they damage them…where do you stand?
Top Comment: mizerylovesme Interesting take, def following. Not sure how lucrative fake sneakers could be to support something that takes huge amounts of capital, not that the money can't be made, but I think they want the return faster.
Friday, 2nd June 2023
I saw this IG caption the other day where dude was like…’everybody only shares their successes on IG, nobody shares their failures’ and I was thinking like…’um, sir, have you seen my account?’ This is a post about failure.
And then I made a list of *my* failures as the Sneaker Savant and wondered which of those would be interesting enough to talk about…and then I remembered…something that happened less than 2 weeks ago. Here's what happened:
I met this dude @geekoutelite_llc selling Pokemon cards at a local flea market and he told me about this ‘Sneakers and Anime’ event thing he was putting on…I’ve never done an event and I figured this would be a great event to gauge interest for my sneaker trading cards that we’ve created.
So I bought my vendor pass and organized my stuff for ~2+ weeks, even drawing out sketches of how I wanted the table to look. I bought some banners and signs and marked price tags in preparation. In short, *planned* for this event.
The night before, this dude sends out an email at 11:30 pm…CANCELING the event “due to [him] being in the hospital” for some unknown reason. Ok. Is there no one else that can run it?
I’m pissed off and frustrated. But it just so happens my buddy @orangevalevintage is doing @worldsworstexpo just a few miles away and tells me I can post up at his booth if I want.
I rush down there with a backpack full of stuff, my chair and table…I find parking a few blocks away and set up my little stand in the back of his booth.
I get a few people asking about the cards, but no one is buying. It’s cool, tho, I’m having a good time watching and just observing how my buddies successful business is going…
Finally…one guy comes and is looking over the cards…and he says ‘let me get that Paris card’ and hands me exactly $1. My first *in person* dollar ever. I give the dude a pack of #DunkyDunks for the hell of it.
A bit more time goes by before I decide to pack it in and call it a day…I had a literal $1 sales day.
How’s that for a failure?
Top Comment: sailboatsupplies When dunk exchange “came back” it started relatively strong and was during a time where sneaker shows were popping up left and right but because of its history, it tended to get a lot of customers each event. However, as the landscape of event changed, Dunk Exchange did not evolve or adapt. The monthly event began to lose steam quickly with each event having less people than the one before. Eventually, it was just vendors, selling to and buying off other vendors. The last event I attended had less than 10 attendees. The guy that runs the show, didn’t even show up and instead had his wife and daughter “run the show”. I did not sell a single item after driving 2 hours to get from San Diego to LA and ended up buying a pair of Parra Dunks for my girlfriend… the worst part: I had only been paying attention to the market for my size (since I wanted a pair) and bought her a pair that I thought was a very fair, under market value. Turns out, her size was going for about $100 less and, I ended up spending $10-20 more than I would have on stockx after fees… needless to say, I avoided dunk exchange after that AND I heard the next show, in the Bay Area, NOT A SINGLE PERSON CAME THROUGH TO RUN THE SHOW. A couple vendors took it upon themselves to *try* to make the show happen and then lost a TON of community respect because people didn’t realize they weren’t the ones that organized the event. At the end of the day I lost out on all my vendor fees, 4 hours travel time, 6 hours show time, and the overpayment on the parras… I’ve since been a lot more picky with the shows I vend at and while not every one is successful, none have been as big of a failure.
Enjoy the rest of the week!