Which Sneakers Rise in Price, And When To Buy
First, the one number worth memorizing: 10 weeks
The typical shoe leaks value from the day it lands, steadily rather than suddenly. There is no cliff.
Weeks after release |
Adult sizes |
Kids sizes |
|---|---|---|
2 to 3 |
-7% |
-9% |
4 to 6 |
-11% |
-14% |
7 to 10 |
-15% |
-24% |
10 to 14 |
-17% |
-31% |
14 to 17 |
-18% |
-29% |
Each row compares a sneaker against its own release-week price, then takes the middle result.
A pair that sold for $200 at release date and $164 in month 4 (16 weeks) is a typical -18%. Look at the last two readings in the adult column. They are barely different. The waiting game has a finish line, and it arrives around two and a half months after release.
The kids sizes column never really settles, and we come back to that below.
The one question that sorts everything is if the sneaker was actually hard to get? Not "did it feel hyped." But what it actually hard to get. A raffle you lost, a SNKRS entry that went nowhere, a long line at your local sneaker store. We marked every shoe in the study on that basis, by hand, because no formula gets it right. That single question splits the market cleanly.
How hard to get |
Shoes |
Price vs retail, months later |
Share below retail |
|---|---|---|---|
Genuinely hard |
19 |
+119% |
1 in 9 |
Sort of hard |
29 |
+43% |
1 in 6 |
Available at retail |
278 |
-10% |
3 in 5 |
Read the bottom row twice. 3 out of 5 ordinary releases were selling below their own retail price a few months later.
Not below their resale peak. Below what a store charged for them on day one.
Now read the top row. Of the 19 shoes we marked as genuinely hard to get, 18 were a collaboration. The hard-to-get list and the collab list are very nearly the same list.
The collab: buy it on release day
The clearest finding in the study, and it got stronger when we cleaned the data. Shoes that were a collaboration with a partner opened at 1.78 times retail and were still 46% above retail price months later.
General releases opened at 1.20 times retail and finished 14% below it.
Same market, same months.
The spring bears it out across brands, not one lucky pairing. Noah and Converse rose 60%. LEGO and Crocs rose 18%. The Kith and On K-Tech 2 in White Real Teal rose 49%. It is not a guarantee, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. One in five collabs still ended up under retail. Some Fragment releases went the other way, the Fragment and Union Jordan 1 in Sport Royal worst among them at -40%.
Most of the Kith and On run fell too, several of them hard. A partner name improves your odds. It does not remove the risk altogether.
Why it works: a collab has a fixed run and a reason to exist beyond filling a calendar slot. Nobody restocks it into the ground. The supply you see is the supply there is.
**What to do.** When you want a hyped collaboration that just dropped, buy it. This is the one category where release-day buying holds up, and where waiting can cost you rather than save you.
The signature shoe: not the same thing
An athlete's name is not a collaboration partner's name. Signature releases landed almost exactly at the general-release line, opening at 1.34 times retail and finishing 5% below it. The name on the shoe sells the first week. It does not hold the price.
**What to do.** Treat a signature release like a general release unless it was genuinely very limited and hard to get. Wait.
The kids pair: the sharpest drop we measured
This one is new, and it is the most useful thing in this issue for anyone buying for a kid. Fifty of the shoes we tracked were preschool, toddler or grade-school sizes. They fell harder than anything else in the study. Four out of five were below retail a few months on, and the median pair sat 27% under what a store charged. The worst of them are not close.
Shoe |
Retail |
Months later |
|---|---|---|
$120 |
$44 |
|
$155 |
$58 |
|
$80 |
$32 |
|
$80 |
$42 |
They also fall for longer. Adult shoes stop sliding around ten weeks and sit roughly flat after that. Kids sizes were still going at fourteen weeks, and by then the typical pair had given up nearly a third of its launch price against a fifth for adults. Adults chase the adult size run. Nobody is speculating on a toddler 8C. The resale market for kids sizes is thin, and thin markets fall further and for longer.
**What to do.** Never pay resale for a kids pair on release day. If you miss it, wait, and wait longer than you would for an adult pair. This is the category where patience pays the most, by a wide margin.
The shoe trading a little over retail: still the trap
If you take one warning from this issue, take this one. A modest markup over retail feels like the sensible buy. Not crazy money, and it seems like the market has spoken quietly in its favor. That instinct is almost exactly backwards.
A big premium is evidence: something scarce met something wanted and the market priced it in public. A small premium is evidence of nothing. It is a thin margin on a shoe that is still being made, and the next restock erases it.
**What to do.** Wait the ten weeks. This is where release-day money leaks fastest.
The Jordan retro: wait, nearly always
This is the uncomfortable part. The brand with the most release-day attention, and my personal favorite brand, had the worst record of any brand we could measure properly.
That is not a knock on the shoes. It is a statement about availability: the retro calendar is designed so most people who want a pair eventually get one, which is the opposite of the condition that makes prices climb.
The exceptions prove it. The Jordan retros that did hold their value were the ones you could not simply buy: the Travis Scott Lows, the more limited of the Fragment and Union Highs, the Nigel Sylvester 4 Brick After Brick (barely). Every one of them a collab, every one of them genuinely hard to get.
**What to do.** Wait, and expect the wait to pay off. Unless it was a raffle-only release.
The ones that actually went up
39 of the 326 finished higher than they started. Here are the biggest shoes that traded steadily enough at both ends to trust the number.
Shoe |
RESALE At RELEASE |
Months later |
Change |
|---|---|---|---|
$58 |
$124 |
+114% |
|
$269 |
$467 |
+73% |
|
$176 |
$298 |
+69% |
|
$125 |
$200 |
+60% |
|
$208 |
$317 |
+53% |
|
$335 |
$500 |
+49% |
|
$846 |
$1,250 |
+48% |
|
$555 |
$783 |
+41% |
|
$186 |
$260 |
+40% |
|
$215 |
$300 |
+40% |
|
$376 |
$521 |
+38% |
|
$154 |
$198 |
+28% |
Read the names rather than the numbers. Vans appears four times, Converse twice, Kith and On twice. Not twelve lucky shoes, a few ideas that worked repeatedly at brands nobody was watching.
The row at the top is the whole thesis. A $58 Vans Authentic more than doubled, because almost nobody bought it to flip. Notice what is missing. Almost none of these were shoes anybody fought over. The hard-to-get pairs held their value. The quiet collabs are the ones that rose. Those are different jobs, and it is worth knowing which one you are asking a shoe to do.
The field guide, in one place
Shoe type |
What it does |
When to buy |
|---|---|---|
Raffle Extremely LImited |
Holds far above retail |
Release day |
Collaboration |
Holds best, rises often |
Release day |
Signature line |
Behaves like a general release |
Wait 10 weeks |
Small premium over retail |
Falls furthest |
Wait 10 weeks |
Jordan retro, walk-up available |
Rarely rises |
Wait 10 weeks |
Kids sizes |
Falls hardest of all |
Never buy resale on day one |
The short version
Release day is not a buying opportunity for most shoes. It is the moment the market knows least about what a shoe is worth, and you pay for that uncertainty. 10 weeks later it knows more, and charges you less.
The exceptions are learnable, and they come down to one question. Could you have walked up and bought it? If the answer is no, the price is telling you something true. If the answer is yes, the price is telling you nothing, and three out of five of those shoes ended up below retail.
Hit reply and tell us: what is the one pair you bought on release day that you would buy again at that price?