Unless you’ve been living under Dwayne Johnson (The Rock, get it?), you know the What The Lebron 11 released this past Saturday. And you likely also know that resellers are everywhere. This is good news for anyone who didn’t cop, as prices have been declining. This can’t feel good for the moneybags who shelled out a grand plus back in April and May, but if they got $1000 to drop on sneakers, they can afford it.
With the release weekend now squarely in our rear view, now seemed like the perfect time to recap the resale history of the WTL, Originally we had planned to compare post-launch stats to our earlier WTL11 Right vs. Left analysis, but with so much good data here we decided to stick to the basics for now:
Data Methodology
- As always, we’re using eBay auctions for deadstock sneakers
- We pulled the data on Wednesday, so it runs through Tuesday, September 16, 2014
- We’ve removed fakes and outliers, when possible. This included one sale for $5220 back in April which may very well have been legit, but it was a statistical outlier, so it was removed from our analysis
- The following chart shows the number of pairs sold, number of auctions which ended without a sale, and the average prices for both of those categories
- We’ve broken down the data by month, but split September into pre-release (Sept 1-12) and post-release (Sept 13-16)
Key Insights:
- Average price has dropped drastically from $1,006 in April to $399 over the past week. This is a 60% drop!
- Average price for unsold pairs is greater than sold, as is often the case
- 423 pairs were sold pre-release, and this is after we’ve removed fakes and outliers. Many of these were sold as a “pre-sale”, although some were definitely “shoe in hand”.
- 772 pairs were sold in the four days following release, with 296 being sold on release day (September 13).
For a breakdown of the four days following release, we’ve created this view:
Key Insights:
- Not surprising, resale prices have dropped since release, going from $413 on release day to $380 on the Tuesday after
- The Monday dip in sales followed by Tuesday spike is interesting. Perhaps people spent a little less time on eBay once back at work on Monday, but by Tuesday couldn’t stay away from those WTLs dropping in price
The general trend we have here – very high pre-release, dropping towards release, dropping more after release – follows the high level trend we have come to expect of all resale sneakers, as we outlined in our post: “Secret Meaning of the Swoosh: Resell Prices Over Time“. We, therefore, expect the resale price of the WTL11 to continue falling for another few months before turning the corner and begin increasing again, perhaps sharply and for a very long time.
Our Advice:
- To sellers: You’re better off waiting a few months
- To buyers: Act soon, in the next month or two
Other Interesting Data Points Not on a Chart:
- The five most expensive pairs went for: $5220, $3755, $3300, $2600, $2025
- There were 45 pairs which sold for $1000 or more
- There were 51 pairs which sold for $750-$999
- There were 138 pairs which sold for $500-$749
- There were 4 used pairs sold at an average of $399
SELLER ANALYSIS
Seller Stats:
- There were 796 different sellers who sold at least one WTL11
- 618 of the 796 sellers sold just one pair
- 104 sold 2 pairs, 40 sold 3 pairs, 11 sold 4 pairs
- All sellers who sold 5 or more pairs are listed below:
You really gotta ask yourself – how does one dude get 22 pairs to sell? And were any of them fake? Same thing for the guy selling 11.
One way we may be able to determine if they are fake is to look at when they were sold, and compare to the average price for that month. If they’re a lot less than average, then they might be fake:
On quick review, the seller prices were not considerably less than the market price for the months in which they were sold. The one exception might be dartanyan152 who sold 6 pairs in July at an average price of $367 when the market was at $622. But even that isn’t too suspicious. So maybe these aren’t fakes.
The two sellers we’d have the most confidence in are marcooO1, who sold all 11 of his post-release, and olxxi, who sold 6 of his 8 post-release, and the other 2 just days before. Looks like these guys have a great (read: illegal) hookup, but are not likely passing fakes.
None of this is conclusive one way or another but, regardless, it definitely doesn’t change the fact that one dude had 22 pairs to sell! At $250 retail, this guy made $8,272 on the What The Lebron 11. The fact that he appears to be the only seller who has had a steady supply of WTLs since April leads me to believe that if any of these guys are slinging fakes, it’s monsterhighcustom03.
That begs the question, how many other sellers have sales in multiple months? That might be the list of fake sellers…
Here we have every seller with a sale in 3 or more months (counting September pre- and post-release as 2 months). monsterhighcustom03 is clearly the leader with 7. One guy has 4 and four guys have 3. Interestingly, two of these guys (redbear225 and royaldove1) have no sales post-release, which is also suspicious.
Our Advice: Don’t buy from these six sellers, the last group. While there is nothing conclusive here, there is too much going on to have confidence in these sellers.
What do you think? How many fakes do you think are on the market for the WTL11?
Regarding real pairs, what about you? How much did you pay for your What the Lebron 11?
