Freaking for Sneakers

The hot resale market online and in sneaker consignment shops like New York City's Flight Club can make flipping shoes a lucrative side job. Laurent Touma, 31, a financial consultant in Miami, says he makes $1,500 a month buying and selling Nikes and Adidas on eBay, where an original Air Jordan I in metallic blue, which retailed at $65 in 1985, sold for $2,001 in January. "In the vintage business, the sneaker has become like a Rolex," says Touma. As with the watches, counterfeits are rampant, so sneakerheads pitch in on sites like niketalk.com to study pictures posted online to help identify fakes.

Customized sneakers are a hot part of the market. Jordan Price, a graffiti artist based in Brooklyn, N.Y., better known as Jor One, creates unique designs that sell for as much as $1,500 a pair. Price's streetwise styles, which have been featured in "Sneaker Pimps," a traveling exhibit of rare and vintage shoes, include a pattern of cigars and 40-oz. beer bottles, whose labels read, WE SELL TO MINORS & DRUNKS. While Price, 26, uses a paintbrush, Chris Hui, a high school sophomore in Milwaukee, Wis., has gained a national reputation for applying unusual materials such as carbon fiber to sneakers, an idea he got after he saw the flexible composite on the hood of a car. Hui, who goes by the name C2, is something of a celebrity at his school for customizing shoes for people like NBA star LeBron James. Despite his fame, Hui, 16, admits that at heart, he is just another sneakerhead. "Once I get the money," he says, "I always put it back into the shoes."