A vast array of collectible apparel exists. Designer hats, plants, shirts, gloves, and accessories are all part of this collectible apparel market. Every piece of clothing has some kind of collectors’ market, but no article of clothing has as much stock in its collectors’ market as shoes and shoe collectors do. There are countless collectors’ shoes ranging from hundreds of dollars to tens of thousands of dollars that are sold regularly; outliers range from hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions of dollars, just for shoes.
There’s a whole website called stockx.com just for looking at shoe prices like they’re stocks going up and down. People collect these shoes just to keep and resell; most people don’t actually wear these shoes, overtreating them like collector items for resale. That’s what bothers me.
They’re shoes; you walk on the concrete, the grass, or any floor with them. They are designed to provide comfort for your feet against the ground, yet the notion of individuals stepping on your toes or allowing a small amount of dirt to come into contact with your shoe astonishes these collectors.
The shoes they collect stay on their shelves, maybe even in the boxes they were sold in, for years or decades, where they decay through dry rot.
The collector’s shoe market is one of the biggest collector markets out there, so it makes sense why people collect, but keeping a closet full of never-worn shoes feels like it defeats the purpose of shoes. At least with figurines they’re meant to be posed up on a shelf or desk; keeping them in the box still holds the same use. Shoes aren’t being used how they were intended to.
Shoes should be used as shoes; if they just sit in a box, they’re functionally paperweights. I understand the value of the resale and the giant market behind collectors’ shoes, but I could never get into collecting shoes specifically since there are so many ways they could get damaged or dirty.
