With the constant increase in popularity of sneakers, some releases have become iconic for clued up sneaker heads, these are usually releases that may have been from a long time and ago and with time and limited availability have become more desired over the years. With the demand for them increasing, the price will also increase. An example of a sneaker that has become iconic is the Nike Air Mags, this pair was a tribute by Nike to the film Back to the Future as the main character Marty McFly wore a pair of futuristic self-lacing shoes, leading a team at Nike designed the shoe as a homage towards it with similar features such as self-lacing and lights. The shoe has a total of 1589 units making them very limited. However these were not as desired back in 2011 then they are today, with an increase in “hype beasts” which are people who follow trends to be cool on hyped up items the items considered hype will become even more in demand due to hype beasts feeling like they need them, with this a pair of Nike Air Mags will set you back around $10,000.
Within the sneaker community there are pairs of shoes which are considered by many as holy grails these are usually drops that are low in numbers, unique such as collabs or faults and usually from a long time ago such as early 2000’s. Some of these pairs can be priced upwards of $95,000, an example of this is the Air Jordan 1 gold toes, this pair of sneakers are valued at around $100K for sneaker enthusiasts, the reason for this is because when delivered there was a defect with the Nike swoosh being upside down, this sparked stir within the sneaker community and has become a highly desire pair of shoes due to Nike’s intense quality assurance, so a pair of shoes coming out with a visual defect is a rare occurrence especially if the pair is going to be a limited number anyway also having a 1 of 1 pair means that they can be considered priceless and depends on what the owner wants or what others are willing to pay for.
With an increase in demand, there comes an increase in fakes throughout the market, these are copies of a shoe usually for similar price of the original and of lower quality. With this problem increasing of individuals buying sneakers thinking they are genuine; businesses have started to make changes to reduce the amount of fakes circulating. An example of this is Stock X they are considered the best sneaker marketplace there is, to combat fake products in the marketplace they have introduced a new a scheme to help customers know the shoe they buy is genuine, this scheme is called Stock X verify, it works by the shoes being checked professionally at the Stock X headquarters for authenticity and then a NFC tag being linked to them, this makes it so that a customers can scan the NFC tag on their device with the app and it will show the shoe and if its legit.
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