StockX Sold Me a Fake Jordan 1 Travis

As much as I love StockX and see them as a great market place platform for sellers, my goal as a blog is to give you both sides of the stories. Some individuals/companies are paid to write a biased opinion if they are seeded products from the company because in theory that’s how they get paid for their work. You’re not going to shoot or kill the guy that feeds you, right? The best part of my blog is I DON’T GET PAID! I write what my true opinion is and share with you my real and unbiased opinions/facts. As a consumers/follower, you deserve to hear the facts and not what biased media outlets are feeding you because of what companies are paying them to tell you.

So circling back to the blog for today…long story short…StockX did send me a fake pair of Jordan 1 Travis Scotts. Was I surprised? Just a little bit because I’ve never had an issue with them up to this point. Was I disappointed? Of course because everyone has my full trust until that trust is broken. Was it completely their fault? Not entirely as partially it was my fault for finding out so late and notifying them. So where should I start first?

As I mentioned before, I’m not a very heavy buyer on the StockX platform as I’m mainly a seller there. With that said, I don’t have a lot history from the buying aspect, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t buy my fair share over the years until the duties started kicking in. So here’s how it happened. I bought this pair last year in June 2019. I only bought them cause I felt the larger sizes were much underpriced compared to the money size and was sure the value will increase over time. Though I was right about the price movement, I actually didn’t just lose my initial amount of money, but I also lost the money I would have earned throughout the year in the price appreciation – so double whammy for me indeed. As I mentioned earlier in the blog, it wasn’t entirely their fault because I should have done my due diligence as soon as they arrived. The reason I didn’t catch these was the fact that when I got them I didn’t even bother checking them because I trusted the shoe I got was 100% authentic and sometimes I get so busy with work, I just simply unbox the shipping box and throw them in the vault and see you in a few years – and that’s what exactly happened with this pair.

I only recently found out this pair was fake because I sent this pair to a customer a few weeks ago and 2 weeks in they emailed me saying they tried to sell the pair on GOAT and they got declined saying they were fake. I wasn’t shocked at first because I know GOAT always makes this mistake so I said rest assured…just sell them on StockX cause that’s where I got them from. A week later, the customer email’s me back and said they got rejected as well. Then I’m like we have a problem here. Of course as part of what I do as a business I have to reimburse him the full amount he paid no questions asked and I will deal with the issue myself and have him ship me back the pair. After receiving the pair back and inspecting the pair carefully this time, I had to agree they were fake. The dead giveaway wasn’t just the shoe itself, but also the inside wrapping paper felt off, lace bags were incorrectly sized and the smell of the shoe was terrible. It smelt like Playdoh for got sakes.

Then I emailed StockX explaining the issue and problem. Honestly I had no hope they will honour it given 1 year has passed since I bought them, but from a principle perspective I needed them to know. Of course I provided them the facts that I bought this pair from them 1 year ago and 1 year later it was rejected – how ironic is that? Though the reply I got back wasn’t really what I would have liked, but their explanation was that the authentication center didn’t really claim the shoe was fake per se – they just said there were inconsistencies in the box and label, hence they failed the authentication. But of course I have multiple pairs of 100% authentic in the storage and being in the industry for so long…I know for certain the shoes are fake. See below.

Regardless, I had no expectations from this conversation as I already know I ain’t getting my money back, but based on the outcome I have to say I was quite disappointed not from a personal perspective but as a market as a whole and here’s why…

I’m just one buyer out of million’s of buyers on the platform. I’m not going to say out of all the millions of products that goes through them will be 100% authentic because we’re human after all…We’re not putting shoes through a machine and getting a yes they are real or yes they are fake confirmation. Every item get’s manually inspected by a human being and there will for sure be instances of fakes leaking through. In this instance I wouldn’t say I’m a sneaker rookie, but let me ask the simple question of what if the buyer wasn’t me and it was actually just a random dude that loves sneakers that bought the shoe just to wear but knows nothing about the authentication of the shoes? I mean, if he never decides to sell the shoes, great…he’ll never know the pair he was wearing over the years was fake. In fact, the pair you are wearing right now that you copped from any of these platforms could be fake that you never bother checking because you have nothing to reference to or you had 100% trust they are real because they passed authentication… and that’s the main issue or shall I say loop hole in this market. I mean where do you put the blame here? Sure you can blame StockX for fucking up, but playing devil’s advocate they can also say why didn’t you tell us earlier or you have already worn the shoes or you have cut off the stockX tag. Honestly this is a problem I don’t think anyone can solve and it’s funny and ironic at the same time because it seems like these platforms have solved a problem the sneaker industry has been facing for years, but as we solved one problem, another problem arises.

I’ve been in the sneaker business for more than 7 years now and this is one of the many things I have accepted to take a loss on because that’s really the basis of business. You win some and you lose some. There’s no such business that exists that will win 100% of the time. But I do feel the pain for individuals that have a legitimate case, but are not being heard. If you’re reading this and you’ve gotten this far…I guess your question will be, how can you prevent this from happening to you. And certainly so, there are ways you can avoid scenarios like this. I’m lucky to be in a position where I never have to buy from the street if I didn’t want to because majority of the stuff I get is straight from the source and literally 0% chance of it will be fake. This saves me a lot of hassle because imagine going through thousands of pairs of shoes we intake over the year and literally checking every single detail – it wouldn’t be feasible for a one man team like me and this is partially the reason why I’m still able to operate as a one man team because I don’t have to waste time legit checking everything that comes in.

So could I have avoided all this? Well one thing for sure is…don’t buy the sneakers too early -atleast the hyped ones. I bought these Travis AJ1s just weeks after they released and now that I analyze this situation and see why this error could have happened on StockX’s front is the fact the shoe is too new at the time and some authenticators probably didn’t even know what they were looking for. Even as a buyer on the market, when a sneaker is too new there’s literally no literature on the web telling you things to look out for. How many people have 2 shoes to compare to? Don’t get me wrong…if I just took pictures of the fake shoes and said it’s real…most of you would believe me because you wouldn’t know what to look for anyways. Fakes are probably still being revised to adjust to the actual retail pair and there could be many different versions of fakes that no one knows about yet. In my opinion, it takes times for the dust to settle and to know what to look for. For example, when I was buying T23s years ago, I honestly didn’t know what to look for in the beginning, but as you become experienced and know what type of variants/fakes are on the market, you become an expert and know what to look out for – BUT that takes time. I think this is the exact same scenario with these Travis 1s. After 1 year, the market has finally settled in and basically everyone knows what to look for and if some garbage fake like this comes through today, you can tell right away as opposed to 1 year ago.

At the end of the day it’s a L for me, but I thought it would be fair for everyone to know about this instance because I know how much it sucks losing money. Even though $1,000 is a small dent in my bottom line over the course of the year, it may not be considered small for many of you and I don’t want to see this happening to anyone. Like I said before…fakes will always be an on-going issue in this market as long as there is resell and though we are able to solve one problem, another problem arises in which if these platforms incorrectly passes these fakes through the market, where does the responsibility lie? In the past, it will always recourse back to the seller, but if now the market is gravitating to a third party system, the responsibility seems to be in limbo. Let me here your thoughts or past issues in the comment below!