Snake America 70
Snake is a bi-weekly email news-magazine covering after-market goods on eBay. This week: Ended items. Reading online? Subscribe!
eBay: Nike tube socks, 43 bids, $152.20: What an auction. When accessory items, like a pair of used socks from the 1980s, go for money(1), we can assume certain things. One, America is a great country for letting this happen. Two, bidders can be confidently said to comprise shut-in/high-level collectors and representatives from the company in question. Is Nike reprinting striped tube socks? Have they retroed them before? Nike socks from the 1980s see a brisk business on eBay, with at least a couple pairs on auction at any given time. This is a healthy number considering the bulk of athletic socks don't see their pearl anniversary on account of being worn, etc. None have gone for this much money. My theory on such matters is that Bruce Willis is bidding against the Nike archival department.
Papaman is Nike's eBay name. That was the best nugget from this solid Wired story about sneakerheads and foam sole degradation this past May. ShoeZeum, the article subject, said so on Facebook in 2012 and again in a 2014 post on Nice Kicks. In his video on Nice Kicks Shoezeum says it's difficult to ascertain bidder identities: auctions list scrambled named and actual feedbacks and before they listed all bidders. He's right. He then says he knows he beat Nike because Papaman's feedback rating was identical (972) to the second-place bidder on his auction. That's not airtight. It's possible someone else with identical feedback bid on the same pair of shoes. Shoezeum, in 2014, could have searched Papaman's bids (on all items), a feature eBay have since removed. That should have been mentioned in the video. I wish I knew about Papaman earlier. It's also mildly likely Nike has a couple of eBay accounts.
eBay retrenching bidder-search is bad for this newsletter's reportorial credentials but good, theoretically, for whimsy. We can fairly assume Papaman got in on the auction here and if they didn't win, drove the price up. But we can't be sure. Looking at Papaman's buyer feedback, we see a positive transaction with vinthunter, 2615 positive feedback, for an undetermined transaction. vinthunter, going off his sold items, sold two pairs of nos unworn Nike Pegasus, both size 6.5, one for $99.99 and a second for $9.99. Which pair did Nike buy?
eBay: Vintage 1970s tan Nike, one bid $75: If Papaman won these he deserves a raise. The abovementioned have no real digital trail(2). Nike Village, a shoe from the Carter run-up and administration ... the leather swoosh means it's a "Village Leather." (Villages have white swooshes.) Is it market failure that 40-year old Nikes go for half the price of a pair of socks? Or simply a product of mislisting? I think it's an ignored asset. A properly-listed version fetched only $86 Australian Dollars in June. Blame isn't the right word ... who's responsible for the lookout being asleep at the post?
eBay: Swatch, Maxi, BIN $229, sold: Not much to say except I have this and got it for cheaper. This is the best Maxi Swatch, which is a 6'11 Swatch watch that runs on a D battery. This particular model commemorates the Centennial Olympics in Atlanta. There's also another '96 Maxi Swatch with the same theme but a hunter green and dark gold color palette ... it's very mature. (I have that one in wrist size.) The seller I bought mine off was doing his first sale on eBay, with no feedback, and called me three times the week of the deal to figure out how to make it happen. I had to walk him and his niece through Paypal, which got nowhere and he mailed the watch out on good faith before accepting payment. Which one should never do. I did this because I assumed he had other good stuff for sale but he didn't aside from an old gasoline sign. Recommended.
eBay: Yale 1930s reunion beer memorial jacket, 19 bids, $698: This is a perverse piece of business ... the seller says it's a beer jacket for the 1929 class at their 10-year reunion, but 39 is all over it. I'm not sure who was in either class .... I like the idea of Robert Moses wearing one of these and housing a Budweiser and clam pizza. Maybe he crushes the can against his head, or the head of Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia? Maybe The Mayor drove him to New Haven for the reunion? Or offered to drive for the clam pizza and didn't mind the indignity of chauffeuring. The seller had two more items commemorating that year, a crested blue blazer that didn't sell and this thing that looks like it's made out of pajamas(3). A commemorative Yale Alumni Magazine article listed future (currently deceased) Yale president A. Whitney Griswold as a member of the class, along with Paul Mellon, the banking guy who raced horses. College whatever ... the article runs through letters Griswold wrote to his parents as an undergraduate, which mention, in no order: bicep curls, milkshakes, smashed windows, bond trading, Teddy Roosevelt, B.V.D.s(4), being broke, embalmed beef, and doughnuts. It's no surprise that some people make it to the top.
Thanks for reading.
Snake
Last Snake: Prince Benetton hard-shell suitcase, metallic orange Nike Air Jordan Is (Relisted, sold)
Snake Before That: Prince Buster check, button-up Champion crewneck (For sale, for sale)
(1) I concede anything in the three figures is not actual money. But athletic socks costing more than Lunch is something.
(2) Until now? TBD.
(3) Great seller. Sold-item highlights include an SOD shirt that took exactly one dollar more than a Benetton rugby, Hermes tie lots, fur coats, etc.
(4) the suit, not the underwear.