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A few years ago, I found myself caught in a torrential downpour on the streets of Manhattan at the end of one of those particularly miserable days when the only thing I cared about more than getting back home was not dropping an absurd amount of money on an Uber ride that doubled in price as soon as the first drop of rain hit the pavement.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I finally found some refuge after escaping into a subway station in SoHo, and as I walked down the stairs, I pulled out the card that I needed to refill in order to make it through the turnstiles. However, my heart started racing when I reached the bottom of the steps and was greeted by a truly terrifying sight: youths. Youths everywhere.
Sure, I’d had to deal with crowds during rush hour before but I’d never encountered a situation where there was a massive line for every machine almost exclusively populated by dozens of streetwear-clad teens cooler than I’ll ever be who seemed to be buying multiple subway cards at a time for reasons I didn’t even try to process before heading back into the elements and walking another 10 minutes to the closest station only to be greeted by the same exact scene.
It was at that point I remembered an article I’d come across a couple of days before that contained the name of the culprit standing between me and the comfort of my couch: Supreme, the skateboard store-turned-streetwear empire that prints cash courtesy of the hypebeasts who will shell out an insane amount of dough for literally anything it slaps its logo on—which is why the company will slap it on literally anything, including Oreos, the limited-edition MetroCards that led to me eventually dropping $60 on a car to finally get back to my apartment, and (my personal favorite) the brick it released in 2016 for $30 that sold out almost immediately.
The secondary market for Supreme gear is absolutely absurd, and while that brick will currently set you back almost $200, that’s nothing compared to what someone recently spent on a shirt that was auctioned off earlier this week for $52,000.
A rare 1-of-1 Supreme Box Logo sample tee from 2006/07 recently sold for a cool $52,000 at auction pic.twitter.com/X13WYjkkIe
— Modern Notoriety (@ModernNotoriety) September 11, 2020
According to High Snobiety, the piece of apparel in question is a one-of-a-kind tie-dye shirt emblazoned with the iconic box logo that was likely produced in 2006 or 2007. The person who sold it acquired it from a collector who originally got their hands on it from another collector who is believed to have sourced it from a “friends and family sale” almost 15 years ago.
I own exactly one pair of sneakers that I paid over $100 for and wear them approximately once a year because I feel bad using them for the purpose they were designed for so I can’t even imagine wearing a shirt that set the buyer back about 500 times more than I shelled out for those.
Must be nice.