Speaker 1: Hi, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe Wish Joe, I bet
Speaker 1: I can guess what shoes you've got on your feet?
Speaker 1: Oh no, I totally messed that up. Well, what were
Speaker 1: you going to guess? I totally messed it up. I
Speaker 1: was supposed to say, I bet I can guess what
Speaker 1: you've got on your know what shoes you've you had? No,
Speaker 1: I remember, I bet I can guess where you got
Speaker 1: those shoes? Where on your feet? That really was a
Speaker 1: disastrous opening to this podcast. I know. I can't believe
Speaker 1: I messed that up so much. Um, okay, Well, with
Speaker 1: that embarrassment aside, Um, we are actually going to talk
Speaker 1: about shoes today. I'm really excited because not only are
Speaker 1: we talking about shoes, we're going to be talking about
Speaker 1: sneakers and collecting sneakers in the market for sneakers, and
Speaker 1: there's someone who owns a lot of Nikes, including one
Speaker 1: or two pairs of Jordan's and dunks. I am particularly
Speaker 1: excited about this discussion. So I know nothing about the
Speaker 1: market for sneakers. Are Jordan's better than Nikes? Well, Jordan's
Speaker 1: Nike you know, it's a it's a kind of it's
Speaker 1: a category of Nike. Oh god, I just keep embarrassing
Speaker 1: myself today. Um okay, well all right, without further ado,
Speaker 1: then why don't we bring on our guest for this episode.
Speaker 1: It is Josh Luber. He is the founder of stock x,
Speaker 1: which is basically a stock exchange for sneakers. So we're
Speaker 1: going to talk all about what it's like to make
Speaker 1: a market in a semi unusual asset. I would say, Josh,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for joining us. Uh, tell us
Speaker 1: about your stock exchange for sneakers? What is it? Sure? Well,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. Um. Stock x is a consumer marketplace,
Speaker 1: not unlike eBay or Amazon. It's a place where we
Speaker 1: connect buyers and sellers, and in particular right now, we
Speaker 1: connect them to buy sneakers. But the way that we
Speaker 1: do that is in the exact same format, the exact
Speaker 1: same process that the stock exchange uses. And what that
Speaker 1: means is, first of all, it's anonymous, right, buyers and sellers,
Speaker 1: you know, transact with the market. Um. You don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about who the seller is or where they're located,
Speaker 1: or what the review is. It's totally anonymous, just like
Speaker 1: buying the sheriff stock. Second, there is data. There is
Speaker 1: data to understand what things are worth, what things are
Speaker 1: selling for, and have a history of data, so unlike
Speaker 1: going to Amazon and saying only what something is listed for,
Speaker 1: you can see every price that it's ever sold for.
Speaker 1: But more importantly than those two things is what's called
Speaker 1: the live bid ask market, which is how the stock exchange,
Speaker 1: how the stock market reaches a market price. Buyer's place
Speaker 1: bids how much they're willing to pay for something, and
Speaker 1: seller's place asks how much they're willing to sell it for,
Speaker 1: and when it been't, ask me, the transaction happens automatically.
Speaker 1: There's a reason why the stock exchange has been the
Speaker 1: most efficient form of commerce for hundreds of years, and
Speaker 1: this is why. And we are taking that process that
Speaker 1: the stock exchange uses and bring it to consumer goods
Speaker 1: and we're starting with sneakers. Josh, can we step back
Speaker 1: for a second, because when I think about investable assets, UM,
Speaker 1: I have to admit I do not necessarily think about sneakers.
Speaker 1: What what is the market like for a high value sneakers?
Speaker 1: The biggest distinction between sort of h cong this the
Speaker 1: stock market versus how people traditionally think about it is
Speaker 1: that it's really about connecting buyers and sellers to exchange
Speaker 1: a physical good. The fact that you may or may
Speaker 1: not be able to invest in sneakers and make money
Speaker 1: is almost tangential to that. But that said, the sneaker
Speaker 1: resell market within the United States is about a one
Speaker 1: point to one point three billion dollar industry. So that's
Speaker 1: people buying a pair of sneakers at say, foot locker,
Speaker 1: and then going and turning around and reselling them on
Speaker 1: stock x for a hundred dollars more two hundred dollars
Speaker 1: more than they paid for it. So let's back up.
Speaker 1: Tell us about yourself. How did you get what made
Speaker 1: you want to create this, what's your interest in sneakers,
Speaker 1: and how did your interest in financial markets come together.
Speaker 1: My background is, uh that I'm a startup guy. I've
Speaker 1: started and run a few startups before this, and none
Speaker 1: of them have ever been within the sneaker industry. Because
Speaker 1: on a personal note, I have collected sneakers since I was,
Speaker 1: you know, probably in middle school. Um, I am thirty
Speaker 1: eight years old, and I have the exact same story
Speaker 1: as every other thirty eight year old sneaker head, which
Speaker 1: is I grew up playing basketball when Jordan played, and
Speaker 1: I always wanted Air Jordan's, and my mother never buy
Speaker 1: me Air Jordan's. As soon as I had some money,
Speaker 1: I bought Air Jordan's, and you know, and and so
Speaker 1: that was a personal passion. And at some point along
Speaker 1: the way, as I was doing a lot of other
Speaker 1: data work in my career, I decided to try to
Speaker 1: figure out whether we could pull in sneaker data and
Speaker 1: whether we could build a price guide. And so in
Speaker 1: early I created a company that was called camp Liss
Speaker 1: C A M p l e. S. S. And it
Speaker 1: was a price guide. It was the Kelly blue Book
Speaker 1: for sneakers, where we were pulling in data from all
Speaker 1: the other places that sneakers sold, primarily on eBay, and
Speaker 1: figuring out what they were actually worth. And that was
Speaker 1: the genesis of this as the as the sneaker data company,
Speaker 1: as the price guide grew, as people started using it,
Speaker 1: there was a natural progression of well, if I know
Speaker 1: the price of one pair of sneakers, then I could
Speaker 1: tell you the value of your entire sneaker collection. And
Speaker 1: you could look at that data the same way you
Speaker 1: look at a stock portfolio. And once you know the
Speaker 1: price of one pair and you know portfolio pricing, then
Speaker 1: there was this natural leap of maybe we could actually
Speaker 1: create a marketplace that operated like a stock market. So, uh,
Speaker 1: what is in your collection? What is your your single
Speaker 1: prize pair of Jordan's And give us a range for
Speaker 1: the value of your collection if you don't mind, based
Speaker 1: on the prices on your side, Can I hijack Joe's
Speaker 1: question and say, can you also explain the difference between
Speaker 1: Nikes and Air Jordan's. Sure? So, um, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of different sneaker brands out there, and um and Nike
Speaker 1: which owns the Air Jordan brand, right, but they are
Speaker 1: separate brands have historically been the dominant part of the
Speaker 1: resale market, the secondary market for sneakers, dating back to
Speaker 1: when Air Jordan's were first released. And so um, it's
Speaker 1: just a distinction between the two brands that you know,
Speaker 1: Nikes make Nike season and uh and Jordan Brand makes
Speaker 1: Air Jordan's. Um, but they're both, you know, make up
Speaker 1: the dominant chair of the resale market. In fact, through February,
Speaker 1: Nike including Jordan Brand, accounted for nine of the resale
Speaker 1: sneaker market, and in February, Adidas released the Yeasy, which
Speaker 1: is Kanye West shoe with Adidas, and it started a
Speaker 1: really a year and a half process of Adidas becoming
Speaker 1: a lot more relevant on the secondary market. And today
Speaker 1: Adidas makes up about of the resale market in terms
Speaker 1: of dollars, but it is still overwhelmingly dominated by Nikes
Speaker 1: and in particular Air Jordan's all right, now, tell us
Speaker 1: about your collection a little bit. So you know, I've
Speaker 1: been collecting sneakers for probably thirty years, UM, and I
Speaker 1: have a very average collection within the sneaker head world.
Speaker 1: I have about maybe three four hundred pairs of sneakers,
Speaker 1: which sounds crazy, but there are people with thousands of
Speaker 1: pairs of sneakers, so you know, within the sneaker universe. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a it's a pretty average collection. But UM,
Speaker 1: I do have um one pair in particular that is
Speaker 1: is pretty special. UM so UM. We announced a couple
Speaker 1: of months ago that Eminem is an investor and partner
Speaker 1: with stock x UM and UM and through that UM
Speaker 1: I was able to become friendly with people there and
Speaker 1: I was given a pair of Air Jordan's four Eminem
Speaker 1: carhart and this is a collaboration that Eminem and the
Speaker 1: brand Carhart did with Air Jordan's and there were only
Speaker 1: ten pairs released the public. They were sold on eBay,
Speaker 1: this is before stock ex existed, and they sold for
Speaker 1: an average price of twenty three thousand dollars. And so, UM,
Speaker 1: I have a pair of those, Um, I will not
Speaker 1: be selling mind mine is Uh, there's more sentimental value
Speaker 1: in terms of our relationship with with Eminem and the
Speaker 1: fact that it came from him. But it's certainly the
Speaker 1: most valuable and most interesting pair in my collection. That
Speaker 1: is pretty sweet, Josh. I have so many questions, um
Speaker 1: right now, I'm trying to narrow them down. UM. Okay,
Speaker 1: So first of all, I have to ask do you
Speaker 1: wear your collection of sneakers? Everyone within this sneaker world, Um,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a spectrum from people on on the
Speaker 1: far one end where pure business people and are here
Speaker 1: just to to to make money, UM, to the sort
Speaker 1: of pure sneaker collectors who could care less about the
Speaker 1: value of the shoes and they wear them and um
Speaker 1: and aren't really trying to aren't concerned about about sort
Speaker 1: of maintaining the value or the or the condition sneakers
Speaker 1: just like anything else. Um, once they're worn, the more
Speaker 1: they're warned, the value of them goes down. Me in particular,
Speaker 1: I wear pretty much all of my sneakers. UM. I
Speaker 1: buy sneakers for myself and I wear them. And I'm
Speaker 1: not a very big reseller trying to make money. Um.
Speaker 1: But with about four pairs of sneakers, there's certainly some
Speaker 1: pairs I haven't worn yet. UM, but I'm certainly I
Speaker 1: certainly will at some point. All right, let's get to
Speaker 1: the subject of the you know your financial market for sneakers,
Speaker 1: because this sort of speaks to a reoccurring theme that
Speaker 1: we've discussed on the Odd Lots podcast, which is the
Speaker 1: relationship between the listing of a price, the creation of
Speaker 1: an index, the creation of transparent pricing, and then the
Speaker 1: market itself. And we've discussed this in several ways. We've
Speaker 1: had multiple episodes about the bond market and its relative
Speaker 1: transparency or lack of transparency. We've talked about baseball cards
Speaker 1: and the Beckett magazine and Beanie Babies and the magazine
Speaker 1: that came around those in the nineties and how that
Speaker 1: led to price booms. So let's talk about what the
Speaker 1: creation of transparent pricing and consistent listing means for the
Speaker 1: actual functioning of the sneaker market. What have you seen
Speaker 1: in terms of the back and forth, what your initial
Speaker 1: recording of eBay prices meant to the market and how
Speaker 1: it traded, and then of course your news site stock
Speaker 1: x and how that has affected the market itself. That's
Speaker 1: a phenomenal question, right Transparency of data is everything, and
Speaker 1: it is uh so rare to find true transparency of
Speaker 1: pricing information UM in any market right now besides the
Speaker 1: actual stock market. And that's a big part of what
Speaker 1: UM drives us in and was the foundation of creating this.
Speaker 1: A phenomenal example of this go back to the camp
Speaker 1: Less days and so when we were a price guide
Speaker 1: and we were the sort of the the the index
Speaker 1: for sneakers and what they were selling for. We created
Speaker 1: a blog that was kind of like fre Economics for
Speaker 1: sneakers and doing this really high level data analysis and
Speaker 1: putting it on the blog. And one of them was
Speaker 1: an analysis into the difference between actual price and the
Speaker 1: perception of price on eBay. Right So, there was this
Speaker 1: perception within the sneaker community that sneakers were very sensive
Speaker 1: on eBay, and we had a hypothesis that whatever you
Speaker 1: see on eBay at any given moment is something that
Speaker 1: is overpriced because it's been sitting there for a long time,
Speaker 1: or or the inverse, right, it's been sitting there for
Speaker 1: a long time because it's over priced, and that you're
Speaker 1: more likely to see those because the good deals will
Speaker 1: disappear immediately and someone will buy them until by having
Speaker 1: access to the the actual sales data and to be
Speaker 1: able to look through that and create transparency into what
Speaker 1: its sinkers actually sell for, what we found was there
Speaker 1: was a difference of about thirty between people's perception of
Speaker 1: price given the average number of days that we see
Speaker 1: each auction. I mean, we can go into the details
Speaker 1: of it, but essentially between the actual price of what
Speaker 1: are you sold for versus what people would think it
Speaker 1: sold for given how often they saw it, there was
Speaker 1: a difference of thirty in the perception of what a
Speaker 1: sneaker was worth. So josh Um Joe kind of already
Speaker 1: touched on us. But we've we've done a lot of
Speaker 1: episodes about the bond market and how difficult it is
Speaker 1: to trade bonds simply because unlike stocks, a bond will
Speaker 1: come in all sorts of flavors of maturity and coupon
Speaker 1: and things like that. And it kind of strikes me
Speaker 1: that sneakers are similar in the at the very least,
Speaker 1: you have a variety of sizes, right, So, like, how
Speaker 1: does the size issue affect trading of sneakers? Do people
Speaker 1: only want to buy sneakers in their sizes or do
Speaker 1: they look beyond that because they're betting on future value.
Speaker 1: There's I think there's some similarity, um in this sort
Speaker 1: of lack of transparency in the sneaker market. But it's
Speaker 1: not really around UM size, right, It's really about channel
Speaker 1: UM first to mention quickly on size UM. You know,
Speaker 1: the entire sneaker recent market is just supply and demand, right,
Speaker 1: It is econ one oh one UM. It is the
Speaker 1: difference between the supply that the brands put out and
Speaker 1: what the demand is for those particular sneakers, and the
Speaker 1: gap in that UM and how big or small that
Speaker 1: is will depend you know, how much the shoe sells for.
Speaker 1: I mean it is pretty straightforward. And in general, even
Speaker 1: on the limited and exclusive sneakers, the brands uh know
Speaker 1: pretty well the size distribution of the population. So there
Speaker 1: may be less size fourteens in the market, but there's
Speaker 1: less people that want to buy a size fourteen in
Speaker 1: the market. So in general, UM, that doesn't have too
Speaker 1: much UM difference, too much disparity in the price based
Speaker 1: on the size. But where the majority of the sort
Speaker 1: of lack of transparency still happens is in the distinction
Speaker 1: between the channels. So unlike you know, a stock market
Speaker 1: which essentially has a monopoly on any particular UM stock,
Speaker 1: you can buy yourself sneakers anywhere. UM. You know, eBay
Speaker 1: is is still the largest marketplace stock x. There's other
Speaker 1: mobile sneaker apps. UM. There are people buy and sell
Speaker 1: on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, I mean anywhere that
Speaker 1: sneaker has come into contact with a each other, shoes
Speaker 1: are gonna be bought and sold. And the majority of
Speaker 1: those channels, just like the majority of other marketplaces, there's
Speaker 1: just there's imperfect information. Right. The seller UM is the
Speaker 1: one who really understands the market better and the buyers
Speaker 1: left it well whatever the sellers, I can see whatever
Speaker 1: they're they're selling for, and so I bring that all
Speaker 1: in one place, right, And a really fundamental tenant of
Speaker 1: house stock X works and why It's like the stock market,
Speaker 1: is that there's one place, there's one called ticker symbol
Speaker 1: for one shoe. Right, So if you go to eBay
Speaker 1: and you type in the Air Jordan eleven space Jam,
Speaker 1: which is the shoe that is the the most popular
Speaker 1: shoe that Air Jordan put out, and there's a rumor
Speaker 1: to be over a million pairs, but people are buying
Speaker 1: and reselling them. If you type in air Jordan eleven
Speaker 1: space and one eBay, you will get a thousand listings,
Speaker 1: maybe five thousand listings. But if you go to the
Speaker 1: New York Stock Exchange and you want to buy a
Speaker 1: Sheriff Apple stock, there's one ticker symbol for Apple. And
Speaker 1: in the same way, there's one place there's one ticker
Speaker 1: symbol for Jordan eleven space Jam, one stock X. And
Speaker 1: by bringing every bit and every ass to one place,
Speaker 1: you can now create more transparency of what's going on
Speaker 1: in the market. There's still nineteen other channels, and you
Speaker 1: still lose that transparency if you're within any of those channels.
Speaker 1: But that's the bigger idea around using a stock market
Speaker 1: drive transparency. It's not only historical pricing data, but it's
Speaker 1: also about what is going on right now? What do
Speaker 1: people want to buy it for and when people want
Speaker 1: to sell it for? So I have two questions. One is,
Speaker 1: since you've had this push in sort of multiple endeavors
Speaker 1: to create transparency, a has there been an observed I
Speaker 1: guess I would say narrowing of spreads where even across
Speaker 1: multiple channels, because there is this reference the prices of
Speaker 1: a given sneaker, do they tend to cluster more as
Speaker 1: people start to four months some idea and to um,
Speaker 1: is there any sort of cross sneaker price correlation Gaussian
Speaker 1: copula is so to speak, where one sneaker trade sort
Speaker 1: of sit milar lead to another sneaker. They're not identical,
Speaker 1: but maybe they're of the same year or of the
Speaker 1: same style, and so you start to see relationships in
Speaker 1: the pricing of slightly different sneakers. These are these are
Speaker 1: phenomenal questions, right, This is exactly what we see happening
Speaker 1: and what we UM observe and look for as we
Speaker 1: continue to build the market and make sure that that
Speaker 1: it works the way it should. Um. So the first
Speaker 1: question with regard to to spread, and it's really about
Speaker 1: sort of narrowing of margins. The people that are most
Speaker 1: upset about stock X on today as we as were
Speaker 1: you know, ten months into this. UM are the ones
Speaker 1: who used to be able to UM sell sneakers for
Speaker 1: more money and trade on imperfect information. UM. But as
Speaker 1: you bring more buyers together, and in particularly the shoes
Speaker 1: that have high volume, where there's really a lot of
Speaker 1: bids and a lot of asks happening at the same time,
Speaker 1: and you can literally see business coming off the board,
Speaker 1: you know, real time, you know, as as trades are happening. UM,
Speaker 1: what we see is that there's lower profit within those
Speaker 1: shoes within the market then people used to be able
Speaker 1: to get. And that's natural, right, I mean that that's
Speaker 1: natural to happen. As more buyers then come into the market, right,
Speaker 1: it'll start to to push that price back up. But
Speaker 1: on day one, all the sellers are constantly looking for
Speaker 1: as many places to sell as possible, So they're the
Speaker 1: ones that are more easily UM, were more quickly gonna
Speaker 1: gonna utilize stock X and list there. So as you
Speaker 1: have more sellers, the price will come down. And we
Speaker 1: do see spreads really low on the very populous shoes
Speaker 1: like the Jordan eleven Space Jam. So you may see
Speaker 1: a spread of two five dollars, But on a shoe
Speaker 1: that came out maybe six seven years ago, where there's
Speaker 1: a lot less volume, that spread might be fifty dollars
Speaker 1: or a hundred dollars. And so it's really about liquidity.
Speaker 1: And we don't have perfect liquidity the way a stock
Speaker 1: market does, where every apple stock needs to be traded
Speaker 1: through that ticker symbol, right, But the more liquidity that
Speaker 1: comes there, that the better that that becomes. Sounds like
Speaker 1: on the run and off the run bond price. Know
Speaker 1: this sounds exactly. I'm sorry, but this sounds exactly like
Speaker 1: pitches I've heard from bond trading venues for the past
Speaker 1: five or six years. It's really phenomenal. The overlap here.
Speaker 1: The larger hypothesis is that you should be able to
Speaker 1: buy or sell any consumer good using this process, right,
Speaker 1: as long as it's not a purely commoditized product already,
Speaker 1: like say plastic water bottles or toilet paper, and it's
Speaker 1: not a complete, unique, one of a kind item like
Speaker 1: a work of art orhouse anything that has some finite
Speaker 1: quantity of supply. All we're doing is adding the demand
Speaker 1: side of the equation. And once you do that, you
Speaker 1: can get into a place where you have a more
Speaker 1: efficient market that UM that allows people to to buy
Speaker 1: and sell leveraging you know, the piece that no one
Speaker 1: ever had, which is the demand side. So it really
Speaker 1: is in some cases or in some views almost logical.
Speaker 1: The logical step of you know, stock is stock market
Speaker 1: is about the delivery of a digital certificate for ownership
Speaker 1: of UH piece of the company. This is just a
Speaker 1: delivery of a physical good. Everything else should be exactly
Speaker 1: the same. Josh, what is the most valuable sneaker of
Speaker 1: all time? And what would you recommend that Joe and
Speaker 1: I go by now if we were looking for something
Speaker 1: that was maybe undervalued that was going to UM pop
Speaker 1: sometime in the future. The most valuable sneaker, let's say,
Speaker 1: the most expensive sneaker that is sold recently. UM. About
Speaker 1: a month or two ago, Nike released what's called the
Speaker 1: the Nike mag which is the self lacing shoe from
Speaker 1: Back to the Future Too. They made eighty nine pairs, right,
Speaker 1: they made eighty nine pairs. They were sold through raffles
Speaker 1: UM to raise money for Michael J. Fox Parkinson Foundation.
Speaker 1: And once they got into the market, UM with only
Speaker 1: eighty nine pairs and it being. You know, you have
Speaker 1: the nostalgia aspect of back to the future, and you
Speaker 1: have sneaker heads, and you have power lacing. UM. There
Speaker 1: was one pair that reportedly sold for two hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars at an auction, and another pair that's sold for
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand dollars at a different auction. UM. We
Speaker 1: had one of those sell on stocks so far and
Speaker 1: it sold for about It sold for twenty five thousand
Speaker 1: dollars UM, and there's others that are listed right now
Speaker 1: on stock x for about fifty or sixty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: But that shoe is so rare, with only eighty nine
Speaker 1: pairs in the world, it essentially doesn't exist. I mean,
Speaker 1: it might as well be a unique, one of a
Speaker 1: kind item because the odds of finding any one person
Speaker 1: that's going to pay twenty five thousand dollars letter in
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand dollars, it's so you know, it's just
Speaker 1: so rare. But that's the that's what's out there right now.
Speaker 1: It's certainly the thing that UM that all sneaker heads
Speaker 1: are sort of aware of and UM, and it's a
Speaker 1: pretty cool thing because it it literally works like in
Speaker 1: Back to the future too. You put your foot in it,
Speaker 1: and it and it laces automatically right around it and
Speaker 1: for a real quickly before you go, uh for an
Speaker 1: end shrint like me or Tracy who sort of I
Speaker 1: have a few sneakers, but I'm not really a sneaker head. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I clearly have no sneakers and I'm not a sneaker head.
Speaker 1: Like if we wanted to sort of dip our dip
Speaker 1: our foot into the water, where might be like a
Speaker 1: fun place, what would be one sneaker that a beginner
Speaker 1: might buy, something cool, but that's available and affordable, right
Speaker 1: and and and that's the key, because you know, buying
Speaker 1: sneakers on the recall market to make money is not
Speaker 1: actually a great idea. The majority of the money is
Speaker 1: made by those who can acquire the sneakers at the
Speaker 1: retail price and then turn around and sell them on
Speaker 1: the resell market. But you know what Adidas has done
Speaker 1: really well in the past year is they've taken a
Speaker 1: lot of shoes that um are very limited and hard
Speaker 1: to get and sell for a lot of money. And
Speaker 1: in particular, there's two models that there's the Adidas n
Speaker 1: M D and there's the Adidas ultra boost, and there's
Speaker 1: been a lot of very rare colors that are self
Speaker 1: for hundreds and thousands of dollars. But they've also put
Speaker 1: out a lot of colors that are not rare that
Speaker 1: you can talk in the store and get and boots
Speaker 1: is very comfortable. And you have this model that you
Speaker 1: know other people wearing literally the exact team shooting a
Speaker 1: different color that might sell for two thousand dollars, and
Speaker 1: you can go in the store and buy it four
Speaker 1: a hundred, forty or a hundred and fifty dollars. So
Speaker 1: I think that would be a sort of really good
Speaker 1: intro shoe for most people, because you're not gonna be
Speaker 1: able to get a pair of Air Jordans. You're not
Speaker 1: gonna be able to get a pair of Yeasys because
Speaker 1: they're just too rare and they sell for for too
Speaker 1: much money. All right, Josh Luber of stock X the
Speaker 1: stock Market for Sneakers. Fascinating conversation. Uh. I will hopefully
Speaker 1: have you back in the year and we can talk
Speaker 1: about how the market has, you know, evolved and gotten
Speaker 1: more liquid if it has. I really appreciate you coming on.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for having me. The next time
Speaker 1: we can talk. We can also talk about how we've
Speaker 1: added watches and handbags and other verticals because we're moving
Speaker 1: beyond sneakers pretty soon. Fascinating. Thank you, Thank you so Joe.
Speaker 1: I I feel like I still have so many questions
Speaker 1: and so many thoughts on sneakers that I never thought
Speaker 1: I would have. Yeah. Same, But I you know, I
Speaker 1: love all the parallels that you pointed out and that
Speaker 1: we see between how the market has evolved in liquidity
Speaker 1: and pricing between sneakers and bonds. It really is sort
Speaker 1: of feasting that there's some sort of universal truths about
Speaker 1: market structure out there. Yeah. I mean you kind of
Speaker 1: touched on this. You could go either way, right, Like,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, markets tend to beget markets, and
Speaker 1: liquidity begets liquidity, So even if you have an esoteric
Speaker 1: asset like a air Jordan's um, you could eventually have
Speaker 1: transparent pricing for that. But on the other hand, this
Speaker 1: kind of reminds me of the conversation we had way
Speaker 1: back in the day about the beanie Baby bubble, where
Speaker 1: there was that catalog of market participants and they all
Speaker 1: just kind of came up with prices that tended to
Speaker 1: benefit them. And like, I don't mean to imply that
Speaker 1: that's what stock X is doing, but in terms of collectibles,
Speaker 1: you can see a parallel right right. The only differences
Speaker 1: I would say is a sneakers actually have some value
Speaker 1: because you can wear them, unlike a beanie baby. You
Speaker 1: didn't wear your beanie babies. B Sneakers have been cool forever,
Speaker 1: so they're clearly not a fad because people have been
Speaker 1: wearing sneakers forever. And three, it's interesting so much of
Speaker 1: the market dominated by Nike, which doesn't have you know,
Speaker 1: which obviously is not just going to flood the market
Speaker 1: one day and sort of destroy all interest, where so
Speaker 1: you have like this stable brand behind it. But there
Speaker 1: clearly are you know, potentially quite a few similarities between
Speaker 1: sneakers and other collectibles that have gone crazy over time.
Speaker 1: All right, shall we leave it at that for today
Speaker 1: before I embarrass myself yet, kind you didn't embarrass yourself. No,
Speaker 1: I can't believe I messed up that joke. All right,
Speaker 1: let's let's go. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Tracy Alloway, and I'm Joe wi Isn't all.
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Twitter at the stalwart. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening,