Unsplash / Edgar Chaparro
I’m still not convinced that celebrities ever actually spend a dime on Complex’s Sneaker Shopping YouTube series. There are so many suspect scenarios where athletes, coaches, and celebs are sponsored by one of the shoe brands/companies and clearly have first access to the rarest sneakers on the planet but we’re still supposed to believe they are forking over a few grand for shoes?
I’m not buying it.Regardless of who’s paying for what in the videos, it’s generally pretty satisfying to see someone get hit with a huge bill at the end of each Sneaker Shopping video. I’m never watching the clip and thinking ‘man, I wish I had an extra $5K to drop on those shoes,’ I’m typically wondering what it is other than scarcity that makes the sneakers so damn expensive. As it turns out, many of the shoes are just straight up inflated.
A buddy of mine has gotten fairly deep into the sneaker selling game and he sent me this video last night. Here we see celebs on Sneaker Shopping getting straight-up ripped off by the stores and spending waaaaayyyyyy more for the sneakers than they sell for online.
Check it out:
I don’t mean to imply that I don’t enjoy Sneaker Shopping because I certainly do. It’s always interesting to gain insight into how various musicians, athletes, and celebrities came to fall in love with various sneakers and I’m intrigued by how value gets placed in various sneakers based on the history of those shoes. Sneaker Shopping is a great series. But the shops they’re buying from appear to be laughing in the face of market value sometimes.
