There are relatively few shoe brands known globally by their company name with no need for elaboration, and when it comes to sports shoes, no brands come any bigger than Nike. Taking its name from the Greek Goddess of Victory, Nike existed as a company since 1964 but under the name ‘Blue Ribbon Sports’. It wasn’t until May 1971, that the brand changed their name to Nike. And 53 years later, the company is recognised as the largest supplier of sports shoes and clothing in the world.
Designs with interesting shapes, trend-setting colours, and intricate details make Nike shoes very collectable. With its instantly recognisable ‘Swoosh’ emblem, Nike is undoubtedly the most iconic brand in sportswear manufacturing. But how does a brand like Nike become so iconic? Undoubtedly for Nike, the big moment was when the most famous Basketball player of all time, Michael Jordan, put his name to a new sneaker that Nike was designing in 1984. The Air Jordan was born, propelling Nike into the commercial stratosphere. Their potential seemingly had no limits – their place in the world was immortalised by Michael J Fox wearing the Nike sneakers of the future as Marty McFly in Back to the Future II in 1989.
Since then, there has been no shortage of world-famous celebrities and women endorsing Nike athletic footwear, predominantly stars from the world of sports collaborating on new designs with the company. The late, great Kobe Bryant followed in the footsteps of fellow Basketball superstar in having shoes designed with him and for him. Tennis megastars like Andre Agassi and Serena Williams have also put their names to Nike designs. Add to that, collaborations with famous designers like Louis Vuitton, and famous music industry names –Drake, Eminem, and Kanye West.
The list of the most expensive Nike shoes includes designs worn in actual sports arenas and designs of which few units were manufactured.
Jordan OVO Drake
The ultimate status symbol – solid gold sneakers.Well, not quite but as near as wearable shoes can get to it. The OVO was a design originally tailor-made for the famous singer and rapper Drake in 2016 – Drake himself and Michael Jordan collaborated on the design with Nike. The big extravagance was that these one-off shoes were coated in 24-karat gold and weighed about 100 pounds. Totally unannounced until Drake unveiled them on Instagram, causing an Internet frenzy. Actual cost? $2million.
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Nike Air Yeezy 1
These Nike sneakers also stayed under wraps until they were unveiled by Kayne West himself, at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles in 2008. The shoes were crafted in shades of black leather with contrasting beige heels and a pink medallion engraved with "Y" (highlighting Nike's partnership with Yeezy, West’s own design company). In April 2021, these black suede prototypes, sold for $1.8 million, with the proceeds going to Doernbecher Children's Hospital. On that selling price, Brahm Wachter of Sotheby's said "It speaks volumes of Kanye's legacy as one of the most influential clothing and sneaker designers of our time, and of the Yeezy franchise he has built which has become an industry titan."
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Air Ship
This is the sports shoe design that changed everything for Nike, so no wonder that they’re viewed as the birth of THE iconic Nike sneaker. This was the shoe that Michael Jordan wore as part of his first contract with Nike, before the design of the Air Jordan. The wearing of this sneaker in a professional game was actually banned by the NBA, or rather certain design characteristics of the sneaker. In October of 2021, the Nike Air Ship worn by Michael Jordan in his fifth-ever NBA game and signed by the superstar, sold at Sotheby’s for $1.472 million.
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Air Jordan 1
The first sneaker endorsed by Michael Jordan put Nike in a different league and they’ve stayed there and excelled ever since. The designer Peter Moore wanted to showcase the colour palette of Chicago and so crafted AJ1 in bright red, black, and white. Worn for one game only, Jordan autographed these sneakers, and they were put up for auction, years later in 2020. An anonymous sneaker collector bought them for $560,000.
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Flat Moon
This is real history as far as Nike is concerned. Designed and manufactured back in the 1970s, this early Nike running design, the Waffle Racing Flat Moon Shoe, was crafted by none other than one of the company’s co-founders, Bill Bowerman. Ingeniously, he put the rubber into his wife's waffle maker to create the shoes' soles. Only a few pairs of the shoes were actually manufactured and one collector paid a massive $437,500 for those at Sotheby's in 2019.
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MAG Back to the Future
Nike had designed the futuristic self-tying sneakers for the second instalment of the Back to the Future trilogy in 1989, as worn by the movie’s main character, Marty McFly. Years later in 2011, public demand saw the company produce a limited edition of replicas, imitating the design with muted tones of white and grey enhanced by a glowing icy-blue effect powered by a rechargeable battery in each shoe. All 15,000 pairs were auctioned on eBay raising over $9.4 million for the Michael J Fox Foundation for research into Parkinson’s Disease. They updated the sneaker for another limited run in 2016, raising a further $6.75 million.
Nike shoes are regarded as a status symbol, probably more so in the USA than anywhere else. That’s hardly surprising given how many high-profile celebrities from the entertainment industry as well as the sports world have been keen to put their names on Nike designs in recent years. Of course, many of the more limited edition shoes are the ones that are the most ridiculously expensive but while much of that’s down to the equally ridiculous self-indulgence of the celebrities collaborating on their design, it’s also due to how highly the brand is viewed by the rest of the world.
