Sneaker trading is Big business

[Hum]

New Jersey.

?What?s your offer?? someone hollered back.

In a flurry of transactions, John, who is only 13 years old, bought, sold or exchanged 20 pairs of designer basketball sneakers and walked away with seven, four more pairs than he started with. His collection?s retail value climbed to $1,155 from $340.

John, an eighth-grade student from Manalapan, N.J., and thousands of other teenage ?sneakerheads? have formed a thriving subculture using Instagram, Facebook and weekend conventions to spot, sell and trade coveted, sometimes limited edition pairs of basketball shoes.

Teenagers who have grown up with eBay and the Internet have learned the art of trading up, sometimes earning a profit in the process.

Jake White, 14, of Freehold, N.J., has 81 pairs in his collection, helped a lot by gifts from his parents. He estimates they?ve spent $11,000 on shoes and could probably make $20,000 if he sold them all. ?I know just about everything about sneakers,? he said. ?I only wear them in the summer because I don?t want to take down the value of them.?

While the lucrative retail business for sneakers ? and the exclusive lines that attract overnight campers outside elite stores ? have existed for decades, this teenager-filled marketplace (or high-end sneaker exchange) has spread from city to city in the last few years. It?s the latest phase ? one whose staying power is unclear ? of the sports footwear craze that began 30 years or so ago when the National Basketball Association forbade Michael Jordan, then a rookie, to wear his Nike Air Jordan 1?s on the court because they didn?t meet the dress code.

To this day, no player?s line comes close to Nike?s Jordan-branded footwear, sales of which reached $2.5 billion last year. Over all, basketball sneaker sales made up $4.5 billion of the total $21 billion athletic shoe business, according to Princeton Retail Analysis.

And the teenage traders attending these conventions know the market, reciting resale values, the buzz of a hot trade and the debut dates for new pairs as easily as others can spit out baseball stats.

At a convention  last month in the Hotel Pennsylvania in Manhattan, hundreds of traders carted shoe boxes in duffel bags and backpacks into a 40,000-square-foot space. At many of these events, held nearly weekly around the country, those who pay a $25 entry fee to enter as traders can lug in a maximum of five pairs to barter or sell and then generally earn from $300 to $800, depending on the venue. To get display space like a real vendor, attendees can pay about $125 for a three-person table ? and average a share of $2,000 to $4,000 a day, with highs reaching nearly $20,000.

 

At the Manhattan event last month, one young vendor turned away $98,000 in cash  :| for his Nike Air Yeezy 2 ?Red October? sneakers, designed by Kanye West and signed by the artist himself onstage at the Nassau Coliseum in February.

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[DocM]

Yeah, this happens here too. Crazy.

[compl3x]

I suppose it is no different to any other hobby/interest. I'd be in it for the profit, I can't imagien turning down 98K for a pair of sneakers unless you are certain you could get more.