One of the toughest ‘legit check’ requests I get on a semi-regular basis is an authentication regarding a sample shoe. When I first started doing legit checks for people I actually kinda liked doing s

One of the toughest ‘legit check’ requests I get on a semi-regular basis is an authentication regarding a sample shoe. When I first started doing legit checks for people I actually kinda liked doing samples because of my ignorance…it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I actually switched my position nearly 180 degrees through one simple instagram post… 
 
Samples, in general, are shoes that were created for Nike (or Adidas) and were never meant to be hit the secondary market. Think…pre-production samples, ‘looksee’ samples, wear test samples, player exclusive samples, salesman samples or promo samples…most pairs actually put the designation of the sample on the sample tag itself, but it’s not always clear that they were used for their intended purpose.  
 
It’s hard for me to speculate as to wear the majority of sample sneakers end up, but I know that some of them get chopped up and recycled, some end up in ‘donation’ containers that end up other countries, some stay with Nike employees, and a handful of them end up in the secondary market…some even end up at Nike outlets.  
 
Sample collectors are part of an exclusive club…and they can be difficult to reach…they’re all in search of the rarest of the rare and will stop at very little to get what it is they want. I’ve had several sample collectors undercut one another in order to make a deal, but I guess that’s all part of it. I won’t post any specific figures in here because none of them like to make public their purchases (I can’t blame them - I wouldn’t either), but samples can fetch quite a bit of cash. Some sample shoes I’ve copped for super low and have resold for more than 100x what I bought them for. I’ve heard of some samples selling in the the six figures…and plenty of others that might as well be mythical. There is no clear path as to how one can find or locate any of these shoes.  
 
It’s cool that Instagram exists now, as collectors can finally show their collections to the world. I have a handful of samples…a few of them I wear, a few of them I keep stored away, but that’s just because I’m not big on the sample game. If I kept all of the pairs I sold, I’d have a pretty serious collection…