Adidas Stream: Market Corrections: 15 Hyped Kicks Still Sitting On Store Shelves

Friday, April 10, 2015

Market Corrections: 15 Hyped Kicks Still Sitting On Store Shelves

Back in 2011, I loved the Nike LeBron 9. From the moment I first saw the shoe online and in person, I knew it was a pair of kicks that I wanted to own multiple colorways of. But because I’m not a trust fund baby and had zero access to the industry because I was working a nine to five desk job, I had to be smart with my purchases. Based on previous experience with LeBron’s signature line, I thought that all I had to do was buy the hyped colorways first like the “Cannon” and “China” editions because they were going to be sold out immediately and wait until the general releases like the “Kentucky” or “Hurricanes” or “Miami Nights” dropped in price. Easy pickings, right? Not exactly, as it turns out…

Make no mistake, several LeBron 9s sat on shelves. But many of them also went faster than expected. And it’s not like a lot of people were rocking LeBron 9s; instead I saw GRs pop up in consignment shops for ridiculous prices. Sometime between the release of the Nike LeBron 8 “South Beach” and the Air Jordan 11 “Concord” and the Nike Air Foamposite “Galaxy”, sneaker collecting became a lot like comic book collecting in the early ’90s, where speculators were buying up the most popular books – which meant super high print runs – despite in the hopes their value would appreciate years down the line. Unlike comic books though, sneakers haven’t had a bubble bursting moment (yet), but there has certainly been a market correction (that accounts for over-inflation) in the preceding years.

Earlier this morning, I went to a fancy Southern California mall to check out the Apple Watch (verdict: wait for Apple Watch 2 or 3, maybe even 4) and see what kicks I might find in stores that would surprise me. As it turns out, I would end up being very surprised when I stepped into a House of Hoops and found a large number of kicks that got tons of hype on social media just sitting there waiting to be picked up. And based on a few text messages I got back from people who know things (read: sources), this is not an isolated case.

Of course, kicks like the Air Jordan 10 “Double Nickel” and various other retros and Foams that recently released are nowhere to be found, and not everything I saw had full size runs available, but the 2011 equivalent of the kicks that I found today would be sold out. Some I found to be more shocking than others – like who thought the $400 Jordan Shine was a good idea? – but between the high prices, complaints about quality and people just not feeling the designs, maybe we are finally getting back to pre-2011 levels, where only the most hyped kicks sells out and everything else just waits to drop in price before they get any traction. What kicks did I see? Here are 15 Hyped Kicks Still Sitting On Store Shelves.