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NBA icon's basketball shoes' place in a booming
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This inconspicuous holdall, which a few minutes ago was slung over his shoulder on its journey from the boot of his car to our table, is easily worth over six figures.Get more news about air jordan shoes women,you can vist ajsize.com!
The commodities Jones sells are not antiques or diamonds; they're not fragile or laden with weight. They're not handmade and they're not particularly robust, either. They are highly collectable, artistically created and of an aesthetic born in his hometown of New York City. We're talking trainers - or sneakers as they say in the United States. And yes, they really are that valuable.
Jones, a 41-year-old former college basketball player from Brooklyn, also known as Sneaker Galactus, specialises in collecting and selling unique footwear - those of limited production runs or symbolic of rare sporting backstories.
He keeps them all in pristine, boxed condition - a prerequisite for any self-regarding sneakerhead - and on racks he picked up from a closing Foot Locker store. It's a lifelong passion that has evolved into his livelihood, a business he has grown from a side hustle in his school days.
"When I was in college, my mother lost her job," Jones explains. "I had a car and my mother was paying for it. She told me she could no longer pay, so I started flipping [my extra pairs] out of the trunk.
"I'd buy a pair of Air Jordan Concord 11s for $150 and sell them for $350. I sold enough to be able to get me through college and pay for the car. So I always knew there was something there."
It's no coincidence that Jones was so drawn to these shoes, having grown up in 1980s Brooklyn. After all, it was this area of the five boroughs that benefited from some of the most important drivers of the sneaker culture we know today: hip hop, street basketball and Michael Jordan.
Arguably the greatest player to ever shoot hoop, Jordan was born in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, just a few miles from Jones' childhood home, although he moved to North Carolina at a young age.
Jordan's status in the eyes of 1980s USA was already rarefied thanks to his prowess on the court with the Chicago Bulls, but when almost exactly 35 years ago, on 15 September 1985, Nike released the Air Jordan 1s, it gave the fan on the street a tangible way to bring a little of his prestige to their own person.