One of the toughest ‘legit check’ requests I get on a semi-regular basis is an authentication regarding a sample shoe. When I first started doing legit checks for people I actually kinda liked doing samples because of my ignorance…it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I actually switched my position nearly 180 degrees through one simple instagram post…
Samples, in general, are shoes that were created for Nike (or Adidas) and were never meant to be hit the secondary market. Think…pre-production samples, ‘looksee’ samples, wear test samples, player exclusive samples, salesman samples or promo samples…most pairs actually put the designation of the sample on the sample tag itself, but it’s not always clear that they were used for their intended purpose.
It’s hard for me to speculate as to wear the majority of sample sneakers end up, but I know that some of them get chopped up and recycled, some end up in ‘donation’ containers that end up other countries, some stay with Nike employees, and a handful of them end up in the secondary market…some even end up at Nike outlets.
Sample collectors are in part of an exclusive club…and they can be difficult to reach…they’re all in search of the rarest of the rare and will stop at very little get what it is they want. I’ve had several sample collectors undercut one another and/or state some pretty rotten shit about some of the others in order to make a deal, but they’ve all been cordial to me. I won’t post any specific figures in here because none of them like to make public their finances (I can’t blame them - I wouldn’t either), but samples can fetch quite a bit of cash. Some sample shoes I’ve copped for less than a hundred and have resold for well above $5k. I’ve heard of some samples selling in the the six figures…and plenty of others that, at this point, might as well be mythical. There is no clear path as to which one will be worth what, nor any clear path as to how one can find or locate any of these shoes.
It’s cool that Instagram exists now, as guys like @solesupreme , @dependablejay , @pevault and a handful of others can finally show their collections to the world. @thesamplez, another dude I’ve been following for a while on IG, has built a pretty wild collection of samples over the past few years…
I have a handful of samples…a few of them I wear, a few of them I keep stored away, but that’s just because I’m not big on the sample game. If I kept all of the pairs I sold, I’d have a pretty serious collection…
So, for me, initially, samples were easy to authenticate. Are they a shoe that hasn’t been released before? Do they have a sample tag? Do the fonts match? Is the source of this pair reliable? I really didn’t see too many samples just because I was never really looking. There was once a phase in my ‘collecting career’, when I lived in New York, that I decided that no matter what I found - I wouldn’t purchase a pair of shoes that I couldn’t wear. So I actually *passed* on a few serious samples because I couldn’t figure out any better way to control my habit. But samples were samples. They were rare and virtually no one (outside of a few Niketalk heads) could even identify a sample from a retail version…
My first (and only lol) *major* sample come-up was a handful of PE’s I found at a Goodwill that I paid approximately $280 for and I ended up selling everything in the lot for close to $15k and that was close to 7 years ago. And what’s really funny about that - the price tags on the shoes told the date that they actually hit the floor - they had been sitting for more than a month before I happened upon them. And people say this knowledge is useless? Lol
Anyway - a couple years back a popular sneaker consignment shop/reseller was posting a sbunch of Yeezy samples and was asking more than $15k/pair. The source of these pairs was kept under wraps, and when I asked said seller about them he told me that every pair sold for more than $11k…I’m assuming that people that buy shoes for $11k either know what they’re buying or trust the person they are buying them from. There can’t be much in between. But. I was in awe - how in the hell does ANYONE end up with SAMPLES of the most coveted model(s) of the moment? Couldn’t the person that leaked them get fired? I had no doubt about their authenticity…samples were sacred, right?
Until.
@corgishoe
Once very vocal in the arena, @corgishoe was well known for having a never-ending storage unit full of crazy heat from the early 2000’s that he stored away before spending a couple of years in prison AND he had the sharpest tongue in the space. He would not suffer fools. Ever.
@corgishoe posts then deletes. Posts then deletes. His account was one of the more entertaining accounts of a few years ago and if you weren’t actively looking it’s likely you missed some real funny posts…
Anyway, back to the samples… while I was over here gawking at the insane samples that were popping up left and right on a couple of these major shoelebrity pages, @corgishoe was busy stacking ammo. And then…I dunno what happened…but all of a sudden @corgishoe started posting these cryptic messages…saying stuff like ‘oh it’s nice to believe in Santa Claus’ or ‘Wouldn’t it be great if I still believed in the tooth fairy?’ And a bunch of us were just thinking…what the fuck is going on?
After a bit of this, Corgi started posting screenshot after screenshot of the sample everyone was gawking over back to back with a screenshot of the exact same shoe on DHGate for $100…like THE EXACT same shoe in the EXACT same pose and the EXACT same lighting as the dude selling them.
WTF.
It’s hard to quantify how much this revelation hit me. This shifted my whole world view. To think…samples were no longer this ’sacred’ thing that just couldn’t be untouched. Samples were all-of-a-sudden something to distrust…I guess I *did* believe in the Santa Claus of samples…I felt hella stupid…
Like, if I’m a fake manufacturer and I’m perfecting my craft on GR’s or even semi-limited stuff…why wouldn’t I just perfect my craft on SUPER limited stuff? Why wouldn’t I just perfect my craft on pairs that I could sell for fucking $1k instead of pairs I’m selling for a measly $100? Like…I mean…if I’m a fake manufacturer, why wouldn’t I just focus my time on a handful of pairs I can sell for a shitload instead of focusing my time and effort on thousands of pairs that I could sell for basically retail. And nearly NO ONE can tell that the shoes I’m creating are actually fake. There is nothing to compare them to.
Think about it - when I’m auth-checking the 42356th pair of Travis Scott Jordan 1’s, I know exactly what to look for. In most cases, I can tell within 3 seconds whether or not I have a pair of Fugazi’s on my hands…but with a sample pair? Who am I to know whether or not the pre-production pair had leather instead of suede? Who am I to know whether or not the color of the piping was a standard silver 3M or a gold 3M? I mean, it’s virtually impossible to tell…
So. I stopped doing legit checks for samples. I mean, I’m still 99% confident that I can pick the right answer 99.999% of the time, but it’s nothing that I can prove. So my 99.999% is useless. There is nothing I can point at to say - ‘hey, this little thing right here is off.’ There’s no way for me to accurately tell what ANYTHING is if I don’t even know what an AUTHENTIC pair looks like.
I’ve had a handful of samples come across my feed lately and I’m confident I got the right choice, but when you’re talking $10k+ at stake - it’s time for me to take a step back…I can admit when I’m out of my league.
So you might be wondering where all of this is going…it’s leading to this dude @nearjigsaw reaching out to me with a predicament - he’s been trying to sell a Jordan 1 Frag ‘sample’…which…is looking to be about a $25k-$50k shoe…but a few people have been questioning the shoes authenticity…@englishsole is saying they’re fake, and a few other folks are saying they’re authentic…how does a problem like this get resolved? And…what does ‘authentic’ mean in this case?
Unless the source of the acquisition is credible IMO…and…believe it or not…’credible’ to me (other than a Nike employee) is a thrift store (lol). I don’t know that I’d even consider most consignment stores as being ‘credible’ because it’s just too simple of a con. Seriously, tho, thrift shops. The VAST majority of sample heat I’ve found over the years has been through thrift stores and almost every single pair of samples I’ve come up on have come through thrift stores. Why thrift stores? IMO it’s employees or ex-employees or people who simply have no idea what they have and are just dropping them off to get rid of them. No thought goes into it at all. Most high-functioning sneakerheads are not spending their time digging through the bins at Goodwill. So a surprising amount of dope shit STILL ends up there. I mean, it’s basically MY bread and butter. I’ve got no interest in standing in lines or entering raffles or (even) going into consignment shops - where is the fun in that? Thrift stores baby!
Anyway…what do you think dude should do? Without the ability to get them ‘authenticated’ by anyone who can actually authenticate them, how does one prove they’re real? I know there are companies out there that promise they can ‘authenticate’ them - it’s a physical impossibility. Even NIKE can’t ‘authenticate’ them. Why? BECAUSE THEY OFFICIALLY DON’T EXIST.
For what it’s worth - if someone came to me with these and said ‘do these look real to you?’ There’s NO WAY I’d be able to say they don’t. They look exactly like I would expect them to look. The common telltale signs that I look for - they’re just not there. But would I put money behind that verdict? Absolutely not. Mostly because I’m not a sample collector, but also because - THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO WAY FOR ME TO TELL.
So as a seller, what do you do? Who do you look to for help? How do you resolve your problem?