Would you buy a share of these $1.8 million Yeezys?
● On Monday, Sotheby’s announced it had brokered a $1.8 million sale of Kanye West’s Nike Air Yeezy 1 sneakers, making them the most expensive pair of (known) shoes to sell, ever.
● But the sneakers weren’t purchased by a footwear-loving collector. Instead, they were acquired by the company Rares, which plans to fractionalize pieces of the shoes as an investment.
● Rares is one of dozens of similar companies that have sprung up in recent years, all of which offer shares in luxury goods, artworks, and collectibles. While the primary draw of these objects (enjoying them, touching them, seeing them, driving them) remains out of reach for fractional ownership sites’ users, their investment potential is, suddenly, available to the masses.
● “Kanye is an iconic figure, no matter what people think about him personally,” says Gerome Sapp, the chief executive officer and co-founder of Rares. “We just felt like this shoe was the catalyst for what we wanted to do in terms of fractional ownership.”
● Shares in the sneakers will be released on June 16 and will be one of Rares’s first offerings. The site was founded roughly a year ago and has backers that Sapp says include the W Fund and the Urban Capital Network.
RESERVE YOUR YEEZY SHARE SPOT NOW
