I'm older so I've gone thru a few phases with this. Once my career got going in the late 90's I started collecting pretty heavy and by around 2003 I was well over 100 pairs (which was a lot for the time). Around then I also started a family, so I sold a lot of the valuable stuff (for nothing compared to what it would sell for now) and pretty much stopped paying attention to kicks entirely, stopped visiting this site and ISS/Sole Collector which were my main pre-social media hangouts. I didn't think anything of it because I had a closet full of rare heat that most new sneakerheads either had no way to get or knew nothing about. Other than 1 or 2 releases a year I was good for almost 20 years.
But during COVID I took the time to really go thru my stash and found that (surprise, surprise) all those shoes are starting to become unwearable as the materials break down. Now I have a stack of classic running shoes that are all basically trash due to foam falling apart, and another bunch of classic AF1's, Dunks, etc that are starting to come unglued, or with deflated airbags. I'm talking all my Co.JP kicks from the late 90's, Europe and Asia exclusive colorways that were hard to find when they were new, now they can't be worn unless I go to the trouble of getting them sole swapped, which honestly doesn't appeal very much to me. No idea what I'm going to do with them except throw away the ones that die on my feet. I just had to toss a beautiful pair of Air Max BW Paris St Germain that fell apart on me last week, it's depressing.
So now I have 40-50 pairs that I can't wear, another 20-30 that are wearable for now, but probably are going to die soon as well. And then about 20 that were bought in the last 4-5 years that I wear all the time. Nothing gets bought and stashed and no doubles of anything anymore. The most important lesson I have learned is that even though I love a shoe (or any other material object), that doesn't mean I have to possess it to be happy. It is good to learn to be able to appreciate things without being in a constant state of consuming and spending.
nycarem
- damn, that sucks about the crumbling sneakers. I have 2 extra pairs of my two favorite shoes as I continue to wear out the main pairs I've been wearing now (Hyper Grape Huaraches and Infrared AM90s), but part of me is also debating about whether it's worth it because of that age factor and the fact that new shoes and reissues always come out.
Sorry buddy. With some of us, we keep all the boxes and that makes storage even more of a dilemma.
