Snake America Fifty Eight
Snake is a bi-weekly email covering salable items usually on eBay. This week: Completed items. On the web? Subscribe.
eBay: 1940s circus-toe Converse All-Stars, sold, $1,350: Four or five sellers are separately listing that many pairs of Converse All-Stars, spanning the Cold War, at between $600 to double that. They are all awesome-looking but will never sell. One pair, which is the most expensive, keeps showing in my searches and looks, at first, like it's not that old. But the toe is super-ridged and they're asking $1,200. They have been up like that for for a couple of years. One day, someone might buy them, but only if it's their birthday. Or maybe someone else wins the lottery, or has to outfit a movie, they buy them. Compare to the above-mentioned, which someone pulled the triger on. The blue toes, like circus boots, jump out at first. Do clowns wear circus shoes? But the value lies in the back heel tag and the weighting--the seller says these are from the 1930s or 1940s, when Taylor was alive. A Runnersworld.com message board thread doesn't reach any consensus as to whether heavy shoes help or hinder training. Another pair of Chuck Taylors with the same color toe, in the same size, 8.5, also weighted, are available for $350 and no one has bought them, but they're only from the 1960s.
Vintage Chouinard ice axe, $500, sold: What a country. This seller, from Half Moon Bay, Calif., was re-listing this Chouinard ice axe for $600 to no bites. Was he asking too much money for an ice-axe? He was not. The most expensive Outdoor Sports items sold with Chouinard in the title this year on eBay are, in descending order:
Vintage Chouinard Zero ice axe hammer 20" long,made by CampInterAlp Italypremana, $700; Vintage Chouinard Frost Ice Axe 19 1/2 inch, $600; this auction; 1972 Vintage Chouinard Frost Ice Axe In Pristine Condition, 35 1/2" long, $480; Rare Vintage CHOUINARD Mountaineering Ice Climbing Axe Camp Interalp Leather, $406; Vintage Chouinard Orange Day Pack Backpack! Creag Dubh ? Mountain Climbing !, $393; Chouinard - Frost ice axe- Camp InterAlp Made In Italy Very Good Condition, $285; Vintage Chouinard Zero 20" ice axe made by Camp InterAlp in Italy Premana, $284.96; 1970's ICE AXE Chouinard FROST ++ BAMBOO shaft ++ eispickel piolet ++, $275(1); Chouinard/Patagonia catalogs: Fall1982, Spring1983, Spring 1984 and Fall 1984 $233.50.
Mostly axes. Who is Chouinard? Chouinard is Yvon Chouinard, who invented Patagonia. Before he founded Patagonia, he made these ice axes and backpacks and pitons and climber hooks and camalots and so on. He started making reusable climbing pitons in the late 1950s, those forks you stick in mountains and hitch up on. Chouinard then built a mountain equipment business off the success of the pitons. Then he did Patagonia. Do people still climb with the old axes? A thread on Supertopo.com reveals not really--the guy who finds an old axe debates between wanting to hang it on his wall, which a couple of other posters have done, and selling it for as much as he can, which a couple of other posters have also done.
eBay: Levi's 551xx Jeans, altered, $650, unsold: According to a website selling Levi's, Levi's developed the 551 denim jean in 1962. They wanted a pre-shrunk jean, like Lee's was famous for. A lot of other companies were doing pre-shrunk--Lee's called their technology "sanforized"--and those jeans were simpler than, say, wearing jeans in a bath tub instead of being nude like the Army intended. I guess these pre-shrunk jeans weren't small enough for this seller, who turned them into shorts. The seller, who operates out of Rialto, Calif., the city where Rodney King died, has been listing and re-listing these pre-shrunk vintage jean shorts at a $650 opening bid since March, at least. No one has bought or will buy them. He's since relisted them for $645. The auction was live at press time but is finished now. It would be pretty funny if someone bid on them for $645 thinking they were getting a deal. Are the sellers that hard up for cash? Or are they just so high on their jeans that they think they're worth that much money? Reminds me of the guy selling the tanker credenza for $7,000. I'm not going to click and find out whether whether someone bid or not. But I'm not stupid.
Nike custom Presto Roams, size small, sold, $5.99: On the other side of the equation, one wonders whether people on eBay value their possessions. Or even if they value money at all. I can't ever give advice ... but why rid of these shoes for just $5.99? It takes an hour, nose to tail, on an eBay auction: photography, auction copy, listing, listing fees, postage supplies, shipping--and handling--and driving back from the mall where the post office is. What does $5.99 buy? Today, it buys Red Stick Chicken from Popeye's, with a drink, but that's a limited-time deal. I really like Nike Prestos, which come in sizes Small through XX-Large. The Presto Roams, which were never produced in a run covered in paint, are their high-top analogues and fit much smaller than low-tops, since they have a lower instep, which is something I found out the hard way. Did the seller find this out this way, too, and then express his rage on the shoe with Pollock-esque dashes of paint? Did they have paint laying around? I think that's the most logical explanation. Was Pollock angry? A Louis Menand piece of criticism on the subject of American art during the Cold War, in the Edge Day, 2005, edition of The New Yorker, leads with the question, "Was Jackson Pollock a weapon in the Cold War?" Menand notes:
A Pollock looked nothing like a Rothko, which looked nothing like a Gorky or a Kline. Either way, Abstract Expressionism stood for autonomy: the autonomy of art, freed from its obligation to represent the world, or the freedom of the individual—just the principles that the United States was defending in the worldwide struggle.
That sounds pretty angry to me. Plus, he lived on Long Island. I'm not comparing these Prestos to Jackson Pollock's No. 5. I don't know art, but I'm not an asshole. But I do know when Popeye's stops selling its Red Stick Chicken, the seller will regret having made the easy buck. Not everything is for sale.
eBay: Budweiser flip-flops, sold, $17: No real extrapolation, story, life lesson or anything here from me. These are just really cool.
Thanks for reading. All you metal-heads who got the Nuclear War Now flyer and are unsubscribing--you're breaking my heart.
Snake
Last Snake: Finck denim coveralls, 350 Benz (for sale; for sale)
Snake Before That: Fur Alien Stompers, USS Ocean Ranger hat (for sale; for sale)