A few days ago the topic of resellers came up. What some people don't realize is that Air Jordan "re-selling" has been around since the mid-late 90s when we, the sneaker nation, was doin it with the OG J's. There were no crazy raffles, no bots, no sneaker sites that published RD's in advance, no tweets... u just had to know who to talk to and network among the people who worked at the stores. EVERYTHING was fcfs. Shoes weren't as "limited" because they were originals and all of em were pretty much GR's. And here's the kicker: there was no strict enforcement of the one pair per customer rule. Hence, collectors, hoopsters, and yes, resellers, would cop multiple pairs at a time, which created scarcity and eventually the shoe would sell out within a day or two, thus creating demand. It was very rare that Nike would re-stock because a brand new colorway was set to release within a couple months.
I remember when the OG 12s dropped for the '96-97 NBA season, the first colorway to drop in the fall was the taxi. Instant sell out- retail was about $125 or so (cant exactly remember off the top of my head) and resale price reached upwards of $330. By Christmas u had the Obsidians, which was another sell out. Before the All-Star break, MJ had already broke out the white/red 12s (I refrain from calling them "Cherry" - that's the worst nickname ever for a pair of J's) during away games. Mike wore the taxis primarily during home games. So by Feb., the white/reds dropped and sold out instantly but all the hype that year centered around the playoff 12s, which was the last colorway released right before the playoffs started. Resale was easily in the $300-350 range.
Believe it or not, resale value was actually higher for GR og's back then than they are now for retros and remasters, particularly because there weren't really such things as "limited size run pairs" or "quickstrikes" or "special collabs" which are the types of pairs that generally have high resale prices nowadays.
Pretty lengthy but hope you enjoyed taking a trip back in time with me....I miss the good ol' days when sneaker collecting was much much simpler, obtaining a pair was hassle-free, and people actually appreciated re-sellers because 99.9% of the people who copped em for retail WORE THEIR J'S! Which means if they were still available for re-sale, you were getting a very limited aftermarket DS pair in spite of the $150 markup because more than likely there was only a handful left out in the market that hadn't touched concrete.
