The stores very well might be doing shady things, but I'm certain the bigger impact in the past roughly nine months has been covid and a lot more people becoming hip to the resale world.
I've seen it with my own eyes, and so has everyone else. Virtually everything sells out on SNKRS; things that never would've sold out before are gone in a blink now. I'm not talking just Jordans. You see it on foot store websites as well.
But where I really have gotten a look at it is at my nearby tiny little resale consignment boutique in L.A. People bring in literally everything and anything trying to resell, and set their prices at laughably--and I mean, hysterically laughably--high prices. You have a lot of people who know nothing about this stuff buying it and thinking they're going to make hundreds. I've talked to the store owners (who are also the workers in there every day) and they've mentioned it to me without me even digging for it.
People bring in worn, dirty fire red Vs and set the price at $400, when anyone can buy a DS pair from SX or GOAT for $250 give or take. I've only popped into the store a few times in the past year to either drop something off or pickup money from a sale (been trying to clean out closet space), and more than once I've watched in person as someone comes in with some worn pair of random GR shoes. Picture some forgotten, no-one-cares-or-ever-did colorway of an AM90 they got on sale at Champs--and now they think they are worth something. And the guys have to tell them, sorry, you're better off keeping those, they're worth about $40 (maybe) before we take our cut. The people get this look on their face like, but I thought sneakers were valuable.
A great example I keep thinking of in terms of how things have changed hugely in short time: In August 2018, I went to my nearby mall 45 min before it opened to buy the black-toe 13s. There was one other guy there for them. I bought a pair from Shoe Palace, asked if I could buy another, and they told me it was a limit of 1 until their manager called and lifted that restriction. I literally turned and looked around the empty store, turned back to them, laughed out loud and said, um, do you see anyone else here? Walked over to Fnishline, bought another pair. Walked to Footlocker just to check out the scene. There were about nine people there buying them. Left and started walking through the mall to the exit. As I passed by Shoe Palace--at most a whole 30 min after they had refused to sell me two pairs--the guys in there yelled at me, Hey, we can sell you more now! I laughed again, flashed my other bag and said sorry, I'm good, you lost my sale. There was still no one there buying them. No one.
Does anyone think if those black toes hadn't released then and were releasing this weekend that it wouldn't be an absolute ****show like everything else? And to think, there were people here on NT in that thread that weekend talking about how those shoes were a flop. It's definitely not as simple as some grand conspiracy of shoe stores ****ing people. The demand has changed drastically, and not because suddenly a billion more people decided they love Jordans and want to wear them.