What economic value (other than hoping for the value to increase, aka tulip mania) can I derive out of ultra-rare sneakers? What usage that goes above "it looks cooler than an unbranded, otherwise identical sneaker"?

For me, this kind of product is part of the "bullshit economy" - similar to "bullshit jobs", this kind of product has no reason to exist other than vanity, as almost all of these "collectibles" won't ever be used. We are using up valuable, finite resources to create and distribute this kind of useless "bullshit product", we are using up valuable human time and IT resources on developing websites capable to resist (D)DoS attacks and on developing snipers to bypass the anti-bot technologies employed by the shops, and we are creating a lot of demand for all kinds of sneaker-related crime - and there's a lot of that: theft and robberies from stores, theft and robberies in the supply chain, ebay/classifieds scams, credit card fraud, robberies on broad daylight [1].

Seriously, fuck all that shit. No one needs hundreds of dollars worth of sneakers that only incentivize crime and bullshit.

[1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=man+robbed+because+of+sneake...