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Comment by acconrad | Hacker News Reader

Collectibles are a tough market because you can't predict what will continue to be valuable in the future (i.e. art, sculpture, watches) vs what is ephemeral (i.e. Pogs, Yu-Gi-Oh cards).

I genuinely don't know: were people trading sneakers in the 80s? Or is this a recent (read: temporary) phenomenon?

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I would predict toys become collectible roughly 20-30 years after their heyday. Ie when the kids have grown up and want to relive their childhood.

So that would make pogs due imminently.

Mistakes (on coins and stamps) is a reliable indicator, actually my dad has a blue thunderbird 2. Most tvs were black and white, so they didn't know what the colour was, or didn't think it mattered.

Then you have the famous flops. That ET Atari cart is probably quite valuable, same for the Sinclair C1.

The Atari ET cart is an oddity: it was a huge flop, but vast amounts of carts were produced before that was apparent, so you can still get a good one for under $20.

The Air Jordans 1 (1985) were the beginning of collectible sneaker movement. It probably wasn't until sites like eBay became popular that the market really opened up.

This is not true. The original AJ1s did not sell well and were often discounted. They were cheap and used by skateboarders because of that. The Virgil AJ1s have the red plastic tag attached to them as a reference to that era (the red plastic tag is how retailers would denote a "sale" item).

I never could find them on sale and never could afford them. If they didn't sell well, why were there so many "knock offs" available (which I did have, and did wear on my skateboard) at k-mart and the like with no logo and the black "swoosh" more of a hockey-stick shape".

I've definitely heard both sides of this, so I'm not sure. A lot of the history of the release has been retconned by Nike to improve its legacy

I think it actually goes both ways. They might have been initially incredibly popular and subsequently Nike flooded the market with the sneaker to the point that it ended up on clearance shelves (https://solecollector.com/news/2017/04/air-jordan-1-og-sales...). The article also mentions that Nike targeted ~3-4 million pairs of the sneaker, which is relatively high for a hyped sneaker. For a modern comparison, this article (https://thesolesupplier.co.uk/news/heres-stock-numbers-off-w...) claims only ~48k pairs of last year's hyped Off-White x Nike Blazer Mid ‘Black’ sneaker were released.

Personally, sneakerheads were a thing in the late 90s, and the "fad" started for me in the 2000s with the rise of web 1.0. I remember the Nike "Tiffany" SB Dunks, which dropped in 2005, being the most talked about sneaker back then and still retails for $1,000+ on StockX.

From the article: > The fervor for sneakers has been fueled by “sneakerheads” and others who regard the shoes as investment assets.

Like beanie babies, perhaps? Or is there anything driving the value here other than potentially future value? (Not that different from stocks, some may argue, but..)

Edit: Based on votes this strung a cord on some people..

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