50 Sneakers I Plan on Keeping Forever

Over the past year or so, my sneaker collection has gotten completely out of control. My inventory ballooned to about 125-150 pairs, which I stored primarily in the attic of my house. It was fun going up into the attic to look at them and try on different pairs, but as the days got warmer, so did the third floor. 

My house is almost 100 years old, and when the temp outside hits the 80’s and above, the attic feels like it’s 150 degrees. This, of course, is not good for sneakers with big bubbles full of AIR that are held together with glue. I quickly noticed that the heat was melting the glue on some pairs and fogging the bubbles on others.

To my dismay, I decided there was no point in keeping all of them, and it was time to thin the herd. As a fan of Marie Kondo’s “art of tidying”, I decided to try really hard to keep only the sneakers that “truly gave me joy.” This was very tough, as all the shoes did bring me happiness in one way or another.

I came up with a few criteria when deciding whether to keep a sneaker or not:

1. Is it a grail? Meaning, is it a sneaker I’ve always wanted?
2. Is it rare or limited edition?
3. Was it a gift from someone in the sneaker industry?

If a sneaker met at least 2 of these criteria, I decided to keep them.

With a lot of hard work and discipline, I’ve been able to sell and give away about 50-75 pairs, and my collection is down to about 65 pairs. I’m having a tough time whittling the collection down even further, but it’s a goal I’m still intent on achieving. I decided to make a list of the 50 pairs I absolutely don’t want to give away or sell and posted the list on Instagram. That made it a little easier to make a decision about others I was on the fence about. 

Below are links to every sneaker on StockX, so you can see what they go for these days: