Special thanks and shout out to Sneaker Freaker for posting about the current eBay auctions! Thanks to everyone else who has been posting to their IG stories, too. Really appreciate it y'all!
The next set of auctions end on 6/19/2023 00 if you’re interested in bidding we have over 60 pairs of 70s and 80s vintage sneakers here.
DeffestShop.com vintage sneaker logo
Hey Everyone,
It’s been a minute since we’ve posted a real update but we’re happy to share a little news today. For a long time we’ve received inquiries about the various sneakers and print ads on the site but were hanging onto them to open a storefront / sneaker museum in LA. The pandemic and disruption of the past few years has changed that thinking and due to evolving priorities we will be selling most of the vintage sneakers on the site. It took awhile but we have finally launched a couple of new vintage shops to sell the sneakers and other various vintage items over at rewindrunning.com and deffestshop.com. Rewind Running™ is more vintage running themed with bigger brands that emerged out of ‘The Running Boom’ of the 1970’s like Nike and adidas. DeffestShop is vintage obscure, deep cuts and bootleg sneakers. Due to their age all sneakers are being sold as vintage collectibles. Outside of that special thanks to everyone who has supported this website and IG account throughout the years.
Today we’re looking at the excellent Japanese sneaker collector book ‘‘C-Class sneaker collection. The joy of collecting” by Mikiji Nagai. We picked up this book because we’ve been continuing to research the strange case of the vintage Kinney NBA Le Village upside down swoosh sneakers to either confirm or disprove that they may have been manufactured by Nike. We’re still digging into that post and will hopefully have some kind of update down the line. This C-Class sneaker collecting book was published by Graphic-sha in 2021 and features 160 pages of 1970s and 80s deep cuts from the vintage sneaker market in Japan.
C-Class sneaker collection. The joy of collecting. Vintage sneaker book by Mikiji Nagai. Published by Graphic-Sha.
Cobra, Osaga, Jets and Cedar Crest 1970s and 80s vintage sneakers.
The book features some great photos of vintage runners and and other old school sneakers from a long list of brands including Airwalk, Asahi, Asics, Avia, Baliston, Bata, Bauer, Bravas, Brooks, Butting, Buster Brown, Cedar Crest, Cobra, Etonic, Jets, Jox, Kaepa, Karhu, KangaROOS, Keds, K-Swiss, Mizuno, Moonstar, Osaga, Romika, Saucony, Spot-Bilt, Vans, Wilson and more. The upside down swoosh sneakers on the cover were made by a brand call Raff’s shoes.
Raff’s brand 1970’s / 80’s upside down swoosh bootleg Nike sneakers.
If anyone is in the market for a holiday gift for the sneakerhead in your life this would be a cool item to give and we’ve included the book information below:
Author: Mikiji Nagai
Title: ‘C-Class sneaker collection’
ISBN: 978-4-7661-3489-6
Publisher: Graphic-sha
We’ll be posting articles a couple of more articles that reference this book over the next couple of days so stay tuned.
Hey Y'all - we're looking for a needle in a haystack and figured this is a small community of vintage collectors who might have come across a pair of these. Putting up this post to see if anyone else out there has a pair of 'SUPER' branded vintage running shoes from the late 70's or early 80's. The first photo is a pair that we own and the second is from the excellent @somashimokitazawa website. If you have the black pair or others please DM us. Black sneakers image credit to @somashimokitazawa.
Super sneakers image credit to @somashimokitazawa.
Nearly a year ago we put up a post on Eddie Van Halen’s mystery velcro ‘W’ branded sneakers and went down the rabbit hole on this one for awhile trying to find out what sneaker brand he was wearing. We’re glad to announce today that Van Halen fan Allen Garber has figured it out and it turns out that he was wearing Payless Shoes Pro-Wings brand sneakers. We have posted a pair of vintage Pro-Wings where you can see the similarities in the tongue label logo to the photo below. As far as the ‘W’ logo goes this must have only lasted for a short time in Pro-Wings history during the late 1970’s. According to Allen Eddie apparently wore this same pair of sneakers from late 1979 through at least 1984. Big shout out, all credit and a huge thank you to Van Halen fan Allen Garber who solved this mystery and passed along the information and photos.
Eddie Van Halen Frankenstrat W Logo Pro-Wings Sneakers
Btw you can see Eddie wearing these W sneakers in this 1980 performance of ‘You Really Got Me.’ Here’s another video from the same performance with the W sneakers.
One last note - we want to wish Diamond David Lee Roth the best in retirement. He is one of the greatest showmen in Rock N’ Roll history.
Yesterday we posted an old school adidas SL76 sneaker ad which reminded me that we had a reader of the blog reach out awhile ago looking for sneakers that were like the SL76… except with 4 stripes. They passed along this photo of Dennis Wilson from the Beach Boys and Karen Lamm from 1977 right before Wilson released Pacific Ocean Blue. If you want to check out other 4 stripe celebrity sneaker photos we have also posted about Neil Young and Dale Earnhardt Sr and if you want to see a goldmine of celebrity sneaks you should check out the @trainer.spotting instagram account.
Awhile back we put up a post on rocker Neil Young wearing 4 stripe sneakers. I saw recently on The Dale Earnhardt Archive twitter account that NASCAR racing legend Dale Earnhardt Sr. also wore some awesome 4 stripe Kinney NBA shoes between 1979 - 1981. Here’s a couple of photos and the ad for the Kinney NBA shoes below.
There’s another photo from Getty images in 1981 where Dale was wearing the opposite blue and yellow Kinney NBA runners.
The Warriors movie logo spray paint font is Mersey Cowboy.
Last month I posted on legendary rock n roll hall of fame singer Neil Young as a 4 stripe man. Here's another piece of 4 stripe bootleg sneaker history. In the opening credits of the 1979 cult classic movie 'The Warriors' one of the gangs is wearing some 4 stripe sneakers at the 2:56 marker in this video…
These were likely Kmart Trax or Sears The Winner II brand but could also be Bob Wolf brand sneakers.
Going through the rest of the movie most of the sneakers shown are Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars. Most of The Orphans are wearing Converse and Puma but one guys in their gang has a pair of bootleg sneakers that look like a hollowed out Puma logo…
These sneakers might be either Kobe brand or Mark 5 brand.
Outside of that there are a bunch of other fast paced scenes that make it difficult to ID the sneakers…
From the still photo shoot images it looks like the Baseball Furies were wearing some yellow and black LD-1000 model runners.
Based on this photo it looks like the costume designer spray painted over the yellow nylon and Nike swoosh logo on the sides of the old yellow and orange LD-1000s.
For more info on The Warriors I’d suggest to pop over to the very awesome website Warriorsmovie.co.uk.
One last disclaimer… all movie stills and video clips displayed above are done so through “fair use” for blogging and journalistic purposes and are copyright of their respective copyright holders.
OCTOBER 2021 UPDATE: We had a tip come in on Instagram about these sneakers and they said that these are DY brand, not DJ brand so I am updating this blog post title. The 登云 characters on the label translate to deng-yun and apparently Dengyun brand is the number one leather shoe factory in Shanghai.
The last time we did a 'Best of the Bootlegs' post we were looking at the strange case of 'abibas' brand sneakers. Today we've got a great pair of bootleg 1970s or early 80s fake vintage Nike sneakers by a Chinese brand called DJ. These one of a kind old school gems with swoosh and stripe are over at @suitezero.archive who let us know about them over on Instagram.
All image credits above to @suitezero.archive on Instagram.
This post is long overdue... we tried an experiment a few months ago to bring one of these vintage runners back to life with the help of our buddy across the pond @vintage_trainer_repairs68. These old school 40-something year old Jox sneakers seemed like a good candidate because the midsole foam was getting a little crispy and brittle on them. Thanks again to @vintage_trainer_repairs68 who did an awesome job bringing them back. I've included some photos of the process and they came out great. Thom McAn is no longer here, but Jox still lives on...
Before & After: Vintage sneaker restoration by @vintage_trainer_repairs68
Here’s a photo montage of the process below….
A couple of weeks ago I posted the Adidas and Converse side by side of the Sears the Winner kicks and mentioned the original sneakers from the early 70s sell for between $1500 - $2800 now. It turns out that a company in Japan called "Warehouse Company" is still putting the 4 strips Converse version of these out and they sell for about $100. This images are from a Rakuten store called "CLEVER WEB SHOP" but unfortunately their inventory is currently sold out. Shout out to @secondhand_nate for this passing along the info on Warehouse Company.
Another sneaker mystery... one of the readers of the blog emailed this over (thanks to Susan S for the photo) so I wanted to post it. The left image is from the 1974 Sears Fall catalog for Simpsons-Sears in Canada. What's odd is that these Sears the Winner shoes there were made by Adidas while the identical shoe model from the same year in the right side of the image was made by Converse for the US market. What’s odd is that the Adidas Canadian version have 3 stripes and the Converse have 4. Either way, I've seen these sneakers for sale online for between $1500 - $2800 so if anyone spots a pair at your local thrift shop you should probably scoop them up.
Here’s another catalog image from Sears in 1976 where the adidas Winner line is featured.
Today we’ve got some awesome 1979 retro Norsport waffle style sneakers by Nordstrom.
UPDATE: These sneakers were made by Nike. Check out the blog post here for more info.
Image credit to the Nordstrom blog