BOOK REPORT – WORLD’S GREATEST SNEAKER COLLECTORS | JULY 2024

We have entered into a sneaker culture unknowingly and I started writing about sneakers and put them in our “Book Report” since April 2022. We can run them down as the sequences as the following:

April 2022: Shoe Dog – A Memoir by the Creator of Nike, Phil Knight
July 2023: Sneaker of the Year – The Best Since 1985, Foreword by Marc Eckõ
January 2024: 1,000 Deadstock Sneakers by Larry Deadstock
April 2024: The Ultimate Sneaker Book by Simon “Woody” Wood

And now we have in this issue: The Sneaker Freaker Book – World’s Greatest Sneaker Collectors complied by editor-in-chief Simon “Woody” Wood.

We mentioned earlier that Sneaker Freaker started the world’s first magazine in October 2002 featuring sneakers, since then they have created a cult known as sneakerheads. “Woodie” was looking for freebies when he started to feature sneakers. Today the magazine is sold in more than 40 countries and has offices in Melbourne, London and Berlin.

Sneaker Freaker is published in Australia comprising the latest collections of top sneakers around the world. For the U.S. subscribers it is charged for $43 per year. It is a bi-annual magazine and it prints 30,000 copies for each issue’s circulation.

Sneakers are actually referring to shoes with rubber-soles and they have been around for many years. I believed that many of us grew up in those shoes. We were using them for our physical training classes and for running and for all-purpose sports. Our parents were using those rubber-soled shoes in their days as well.

It was in the late 1970s and early 1980s when basketball players started to use them in basketball courts. It began with Converse, and brands like Puma and Adidas also joined the market by promoting basketball shoes.

In this book, it is analyzing the art of sneaker collecting as the book title suggested. It tells you the knowledge behind the collectible sneakers, where to hunt them, to look for those special editions, and be prepared for paying those prices. Believe it or not, they have been auctioned at Sotheby’s and Christie’s.   

The editor-in-chief of Sneaker Freaker, Woody, pointed out in his preface about research, the photography skills to put the collected pieces in images, storage, cleaning, insurance, notes about avoiding fakes, which are all important for the collectors.

I found that the quote, “Yeezy Come, Yeezy Go” is so true for some talents who shot up the sales charts but faded with fatal remarks. It is a lesson for every one of us to learn.

From the book I learned that the shoes Nike Sky Force were given by Nike to Michael Jordan in his sophomore year in 1983 as he was already an up-and-coming star. That was how they nourish and recruit talents in their early days. Air Jordan has been an important line in Nike!

We have also come know that jerseys worn by the players and when they became the world-renowned athletes are also becoming sports memorabilia of all time.    

This book also teaches how to be a collector, and to know the right questions to ask. It is definitely a different culture which is getting hot as it goes. 

I would like to point out that every article they published in this book, “World’s Greatest Sneaker Collectors”, and “The Ultimate Sneaker Book” are all those pieces from the previous issues of Sneaker Freaker and they have been compiled into these two books. I found that it is still very interesting.

For “World’s Greatest Sneaker Collectors”, the book is divided into 38 different chapters. In total the book has 751 pages which makes it a very interesting book for those sneakerheads to read.

This book is good for everything you want to know about sneakers. There are many ideas if you are a sneaker designer which can certainly help to inspire you.