It was yet another busy weekend at the office as we closed out another collection buyout this morning. I’m sure it was just an equally busy Saturday for some of you as you were probably busy chasing the Travis Scott dunks…not saying we weren’t chasing them either, but we had to work in parallel at the same time because we couldn’t be at 2 places at once. Just for the record, we don’t usually do too many of these over the course of the year as these aren’t our bread and butter from the business side, but we do it mainly to help out local collectors that don’t have time to sell them off individually. This buyout actually came across the same time as last week’s buyout, but logistically we had to push this one out 1 week as you can tell our office was getting tight in terms of space. Over the course of increased volume of sneakers I learned that organization and investing in shelves is absolutely key.
As all of you are probably curious to know…what was in the collection? As you can tell from the picture above this collector had a good mix of Dunk Sbs along with Retro Jordans and by telling from the boxes you can probably guess the age of the collector…lol. This is why I love doing collections because just by looking at the shoes one has, I’m able to learn a lot about the person in terms of what era he was from in sneaker culture before even meeting him in person. This collection was strictly size 8 and ALL brand new DS with og all. There was only like 3 pairs that were a 8.5, but every single pair was in a size 8. As a collector we all know this is VERY hard because hunting for an exact size can be extremely difficult and even for me being a true size 10, I would have sizes ranging from 9.5-10.5 because it’s simply that difficult to get everything in your size – especially in the era before StockX came about.
Let’s start off with the highest priced pair in the collection. Surprisingly so, it was these DS Nike Dunk SB Day of the Dead sz 8 US. I’m still blown away at how much this pair has gone up in value. The last few pairs sold on StockX was well over the $2,000 USD mark and I don’t think many of us would have imagined this would happen. I remember selling these for $600 and I was still questioning why anyone would pay this high of a price for a non hype dunk at the time. But in hind sight, the buyer(s) has the last laugh now cause the price is now worth 3-4x as much.
Of course there were a ton of other great dunks in the mix and these are the usual suspect. DS Tiffany, Melvins, Bears and etc… These came as no surprise as if you are a SB collector during mid-late 2000s, these are pretty much a staple shoe to have in every SB collector’s collection.
Moving on to the Jordan’s…man I wanted to say it felt like I went back into a time capsule 10 years ago. This collector kept all this sneakers in absolute pristine condition and DS, it was almost like grabbing them fresh off the shelves at foot locker yesterday. I’m just mind blown at how none of these sneakers were ever worn because if it was the young and dumb me back in the day, I would have wore almost everything atleast once, but the fact he didn’t wear any of them actually helped the value of his collection. Some of the notables were Jordan DB3s, every grail 4s back in the day and the not so hyped Jordan BINS today. Like I said before, time changes and so does prices.
All in all I had a great time doing this buy out because the buyer was super understanding and easy to work with. Sometimes its very hard when it comes to these types of buyouts because buyers want the most out of their collection (I certainly understand the emotional part of it) and we at the same time have to make a little bit of spread as well because at the end of the day we are putting in the work. During our initial discussions on the buyout price I had to be straight up with the seller. I told him yes this is an amazing collection, but had you came to me just a few years ago with just the Jordan collection – you could have gotten a lot more in terms of value. I wasn’t able to give too much value on the Jordans because most of the pairs either has retroed atleast once and some twice, but more importantly some pairs are too old to be worn which will hamper the value of the sneakers significantly. However, I did tell him he is lucky because dunks on the other hand went completely UP, which gave him a off set in the lost in value he got on the Jordan’s. No one is able to time the market perfectly, but it’s just crazy to think that just a few years can materially change the value of your sneaker collection. Just 3 years ago cool Grey 4s were absolute grails and would fetch for $400+ easily.
Well now the easy part is out of the way…the hardest part actually starts now…the selling. Luckily I have done a few of these collection flips in the past so I’m a little more experienced in handling the volume and knowing what sells best of what platform. I still remember my very first time doing a buyout of 100+ pairs. I was such a rookie that it took me well over a year to move all the shoes because I was NOT prepared and had no idea what the best route to move certain shoes were. You really can’t learn this aspect of the job from a text book – you really need to be on the field and get hands on experience to really learn the trick of the trade. Even by reading my blogs can only get you so far, but if you are a re-seller I highly encourage you to attempt buyouts like these once in a while because you actually learn quite a lot from it and today it may be sneakers, tomorrow it may be trading cards…but the skill you learn from being able to accurately assess value – that is a skill that will last you a life time!
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Man I look forward to doing this one day, great article. Hella inspiring!
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