← Back to archive
Instagram

Someone sent me this screenshot the other day and asked what I thought. I said “photoshop?”   Dude then replied with ‘no, this is actually a screenshot I took earlier today.’ The question he’s asking

December 11, 2020

archive image

Someone sent me this screenshot the other day and asked what I thought. I said “photoshop?”  
Dude then replied with ‘no, this is actually a screenshot I took earlier today.’ The question he’s asking is - why would StockX show a sale of $30 for a shoe that is valued at around $10k. I replied with ‘Remember @stockx gets data from multiple sources. Sometimes there are glitches.’ He responded with ‘pardon my ignorance, but ‘multiple sources’?’ I told him I’d post as I’ve been seeing the screenshot float around a lot lately... 

First - I’d say there’s likely zero chance anyone sold an authentic pair of Yeezy 2 RO’s for $30 or 60 EU or whatever the price is. And...other than an obvious software glitch, I really only have one other explanation...  

Some of y’all might remember that I worked with @joshluber for a short time (seriously, like 2 weeks) on his pre-StockX venture. ‘Campless’ - a sneaker price guide - is what I ‘helped’ on (I was in WAY over my head) and Campless is what Josh used to pitch the idea of @stockx to Dan Gilbert. An early version of StockX, basically. 

Campless was more or less a data website...it ‘scraped’ data from various sources in order to build an early picture of the sneaker resale market. From what I understood - Josh figured out the programming language ‘R’ and fine-tuned it on a number of marketplaces (most notably eBay and Flight Club) and compiled the data to tell the (resale) story behind the top shoes on the market. Early on, I remember seeing several glitches like this - I think Josh did a good job of rooting them out over time, but in software there are always minor anomalies.  

So, my guess is that the scraper is still used for *SOME* StockX data but it isn’t always monitored and isn’t always correct. IMO they scraped some shitty data and it populated on the front end, giving us a wild number. In finance we used to say ‘GIGO’, meaning ‘garbage in, garbage out.’  

A quick look at eBay will show you a recently ‘sold’ item with the title “RARE Nike Air Yeezy 2 NRG Red October RECEIPT ONLY 100% AUTHENTIC sz10.5”...is it possible that StockX scraped that one?

Tags: Nike Yeezy
502 likes 39 comments
View original on Instagram