Those smelly old trainers at the back of the wardrobe could be worth a mint, says Sotheby’s
THEY may be tucked away at the back of a wardrobe gathering dust and emitting unpleasant odours – but smelly old trainers could be worth thousands of pounds, according to Sotheby’s.
The auction house recently sold a pair of incredibly rare Nike running shoes for a record price of almost half a million dollars. It is now encouraging the public to scour their cupboards for old trainers and get them valued to see if they could be worth a small fortune.
Noah Wunsch, Sotheby’s global head of e-commerce, told The Sunday Telegraph: “It’s worthwhile checking to see if you’ve got any rare pairs stashed away. This was our first trainer auction, and the incredible results are a sure sign that the market is growing, and that collectors are taking notice of trainers as objects of design.”
Miles Nadal, a collector, bought the 1972 Nike “Moon Shoes” for $437,500 (£360,000) at Sotheby’s in New York.
Designed by Nike’s co-founder Bill Bowerman, they are one of just 12 pairs ever made. Trainer re-sellers, who are part of a booming industry worth around £1.6billion, agree that the public should riffle through their cupboards to make sure they aren’t harbouring trainers which could be worth much more than their original price.
Robert Franks is the co-founder of Kick Game, a leading rare footwear specialist in Kensington which regularly buys and sells shoes for thousands of pounds. He said: “The secondary selling industry for trainers is massive – it’s like watches and wine – and is the world’s largest unregulated market.
“When Nike brings out a shoe and there’s only 5,000 of them in the world, we will try to buy all of them. One of the most expensive pairs we bought was some Nike ‘Back to the Future’ trainers for £35,000.” He added: “It’s just gone berserk. People end up camping outside shops just to get their hands on these shoes because they know as soon as they walk out of the shop with them, they are worth potentially three or four times the original price.
“People should check through their old trainers because something that was worth £100 could now be worth £1,000.”