June 6, 2019

Yeezy Boost 350 V2 Black - By The Numbers

Jesse Einhorn

Senior Economist at StockX

The Yeezy Boost 350 V2 Black drops this weekend and looks to be one of the more highly anticipated colorways of the 350 silhouette. From a price data perspective, the 350 model has had a string of high-profile victories in recent months, and early indications are that the Yeezy Boost 350 V2 Black will continue the ongoing win streak.

Pre-release sales volume has been brisk on StockX, with more than 3000 pairs flipping on our platform as of Thursday before the drop. Prices have fallen since their early highs: a few weeks back, pairs of the Yeezy Boost 350 V2 Black were reselling for more than $1000 on StockX. Now, pre-release prices have stabilized at around $440 a pair. But it remains to be seen how much prices will fall – if at all – once supply fully hits the market this weekend.

If you look at pre-release prices for the last 5 major Yeezy 350 drops, the 350 Black is on track to outperform. We went back and looked at prices for recent 350 releases the day before the official release. The oldest of the group, the 350 Static, was flipping for just 30% over retail the day before it dropped. More recent releases like the Clay, TRFRM, and Glow colorways were all reselling between 60% to 80% over retail a day before release. But the Yeezy Boost 350 V2 Black is currently outperforming all of them, flipping for close to 100% above retail as of Thursday.

Looking ahead at the next week- how will prices for the Yeezy Boost 350 V2 Black likely behave?

The best scenario, or at least most hopeful scenario, is that the 350 Black colorway follows the same price trajectory as the 350 Glow that released last month. If you look at release-week sales data – that is, StockX sales from the first 7 days after the official release – the 350 Glow had the highest price premium of any recent wide-release Yeezy 350 in the past 18 months. Over that time frame, we’ve had seven Yeezy 350 releases with at least 1000 sales in their first week of resale. (Note: this group does not include more limited releases like the Hyperspace and Static Reflective 350). Of those, the Yeezy 350 Glow had the highest price premium of the bunch, reselling for nearly double retail in its first week on the market.

Looking closer at the data, this appears to be part of a larger trend in Yeezy 350 prices. The last three wide-release 350 colorways (the Glow, Clay, and TRFRM) all started out flipping at a price premium of at least 70%. By contrast, earlier releases like the Butter, Sesame, and Static began reselling at less than 30% over retail.

Typically, prices continue to fall in the weeks after the release: this is what happened with the Butter and Sesame colorways, which lost between 10% and 20% of their resale value in the first 15 days after the drop. But once again, the 350 Glow represented an interesting exception. Glow prices fell sharply in the days before the official release, reaching a low of $390 on the Thursday before the drop. But after release day, prices actually increased a remarkable 30%, rising to as high as $500, and ended up stabilizing around $470 – far above their pre-release average. What likely happened was that buyers likely anticipated a much larger drop, when in fact supply was more limited. And because demand outstripped this more limited supply, prices rose.

If the Yeezy Boost 350 V2 Black follows a similar pattern as the Glow colorway, we could see prices rise even high than they are now.