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.
🚨 Attention 🚨 We're stoked to announce that our eBay auctions are live and we're selling some rare vintage kicks this week! Starting bids are just 99 cents with no reserve, so you might just snag a steal. Plus, we offer worldwide shipping! Don't miss out on the chance to add some one-of-a-kind sneakers to your collection. Head over to our eBay auctions here!
The Deffest vintage sneaker auctions at eBay.
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.
Things are getting weird out there…
Raff’s vintage sneakers compared with Maden ‘Fake Series’ retro upside down swoosh sneakers.
Here at the Deffest blog we’re all about a groundbreaking post and we think this might be a new milestone in sneaker history - the first time we’ve ever seen a bootleg of a bootleg. This post was brought to you by the power of Google’s Lens tool. We recently picked up and reviewed the vintage sneaker book by Mikiji Nagai’s called ‘C-Class sneaker collection. The joy of collecting.’ While we were researching that book we used Google Lens to find more information on it we came across this link to a brand called ‘Maden Wear’ series of sneakers called the ‘Fake Series’ and donning another upside down Nike swoosh. See photos below:
As best as we can tell what happened here is that a factory purchased the Mikiji Nagai book then went rogue and began making knock offs of the sneakers in the book, shockingly including a copy of Raff’s brand 1970’s upside down swoosh Nike bootleg. There is no tongue or heel label on these shoes outside of the footbed which says Maden C-CLASS sneaker. Just to be clear we are not promoting these sneakers but merely reporting on it. The sneakers in the photos above are low quality construction and an overall poor design. We’d much rather have the OG Raff’s or some proper 1970’s old school Nike runners. One last note - we reached out to Mikiji Nagai for a comment but did not hear back.
We’re stoked for the coming NBA season to get going and will be posting some vintage basketball sneaker ads over the next couple of weeks. If you’re interested in old school basketball sneaker history you can check them out under the ‘Hoop Stars’ tag here on the blog.
The 2022-2023 NBA season is right around the corner so we’re going to be posting some basketball sneaker content over the next few days. Today we’ve got some retro Basketball high tops from Jaclar. These Intimidator 8192 model sneakers in red and white colorway are some old school throwbacks. If you want to pick up a pair you can check them out over at Jaclar’s website here.
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.
We love old school sneakers and old school hip hop. During our travels across the web we came across these masterpiece commercials for Harput’s up in Oakland and thought y’all would appreciate them.
Here’s another one….
Harput’s was founded by Turk Harput and we’ve included the full history from Robin J. Moody’s Portland Business Journal article ‘Vintage sneaker showcase’ from Jun 26, 2003.
Vintage sneaker showcase
Collectors covet long-ago models from top athletic shoemakersBy Robin J. Moody of The Portland Business Journal
Jun 26, 2003It all started when Turk Harput was cruising a flea market in Oakland, Calif., in 1978 and spotted 1,000 pairs of discontinued sneakers.
He traded his '74 Volvo for the entire stock and began hawking the shoes--some dating from the '40s--from the back of his VW bus. Most sold for $5 or $10.
Today Harput's, the store that bears his name, is a purveyor of rare and retro sneakers that enjoys a special partnership with Adidas and caters to "sneaker heads" or rare shoe collectors.
It has a thriving web-based business, in addition to a shop in the Fillmore district of San Francisco. Turk Harput's son Gus Harput opened a shop in Portland at 139 N.W. Second Ave. in December 2002. It remains a family-owned business.
Ken Thornby, director of sports heritage for Adidas America, called Harput's one of the company's "trend accounts," that gets dibbs on Adidas' most exclusive product.
"We have had a working relationship with Harput's since the '70s. We share ideas and when there are sneaker shows in town we sometimes go together," Thornby said.
Sales of so-called retro shoes grew 11.4 percent in 2002, according to the trade group Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association. Harput's has made a name for itself selling these clean, old-school styles.
The Harput family has taken the unusual step of putting select shoes into storage. They take them out--sometimes decades later--to sell. This strategy has helped the company find a niche and stay in business in a market dominated by national chains.
"We had to specialize and offer what the chains could not," said Gus Harput. "We cut down our buying of shoes to those that were deemed classic and original and left the athletic performance stuff completely. We pulled this off at first with our extensive supply of 'dead-stock' shoes, put away for years in our San Francisco basement."
At the same time, manufacturers like Adidas began offering more retro models, distributing many lines of exclusive and limited edition product to shoe boutiques. The strategy has helped build a customer base for a whole new market segment--the sneaker collector, according to Gus Harput.
"[Adidas was] right at the beginning of reshaping sneaker tastes and reintroducing the retro products customers wanted," Harput said.
At the Portland shop, a few pairs of true vintage shoes are for sale in addition to dozens of re-released originals from Nike, Adidas, Puma and even New Balance.
A pair of original Adidas Chile '62s is priced at $160, and a pair of 1982 Nike Air Flights costs $200. A pair of Adidas designer Yohji Yamamoto's knee-high, neoprene, fashion-statement boots is priced at $400. A call to Nike was not returned by press time.
Owner Gus Harput has an extensive personal collection of rare shoes--many of which are on display at the Old Town store. One particularly rare Adidas shoe on display, made of ostrich skin, is reputed to be worth $10,000.
Part of the lore of Harput's is its online Harput's Vault, which sells rare and sought-after shoes, typically for $1,000. This week, Adidas Universal Kangaroos, made in West Germany, and the French-made Adidas Tobacco, were among the featured shoes for sale.
"With Adidas, the highly valuable shoes are those manufactured in France, Yugoslavia and West Germany because the company hasn't made sneakers there in 15 years," explained footwear culture consultant and sneaker collector Chris Hall.
Hall added there are a limited number of hard-core sneaker collectors, but more people who will pay high prices for remakes.
"There is a small handful across the world--perhaps 100--who will pay top dollar for vintage sneakers. There are more that would pay $700 for a remake that came out this year," said Hall, who also writes a column on footwear called Kickin' It for Mass Appeal magazine.
A good portion of sneaker heads are Asian males ages 13 to 35, Hall said. Hipsters and baby boomers are also fans, Harput said. Retro shoes are worn by people seeking fashion over function.
"For some it is reminiscing their youth through Adidas trainers they wore as kids, or trainers they wish they'd worn as kids. ... For others it's their devotion to the mighty athletes or teams that donned the three stripes on the winners' podium," Harput said in a recent inter-view with the online publication Propertop.com.
Adidas spokesman Thornby said core consumers for retro shoes are ages 14 to 24. There are also men in their 30s who grew up during the sneaker boom and are nostalgic for the shoes they wore during their youth.
"These are sneaker junkies who spend the money to seek out expensive shoes. They are on top of fashion and art," Thornby said, and some even have photo albums of their collections.
But fickle consumer tastes could mean retro styles go the way of Day-Glo.
"I'm always concerned about changing tastes," Thornby said. "A lot of people thought it would be over by now, but sales are still strong. These are clean, comfortable products people connect with."
Gus Harput predicts sales will hold steady in the coming months, "but I don't see things bullish," he added.
Harput's Portland store is open from noon to 7 p.m. daily.
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.
We’re always stoked to see old school 70’s and 80s’s runner models make a comeback and recently spotted these Puma Easy Rider II retro sneakers. Below we have included a back in the day 1981 vintage ad for the Easy Rider and shout out to Puma for bringing these back again. If you’re interested in buying a pair we have posted affiliate links to Puma.com and Nordstrom.com which have a couple of different colorways. You can also click on the sneaker images below to go to those product pages.
Below are the colorways available at Nordstrom.com.
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.
It’s been awhile since I posted a vintage sneaker repair here on the blog but today we’ve got a good one. This was a restoration project to see if I could revive these old 4 stripe yellow and black 1977 Sears The Winner retro running shoes. These sneakers were in maybe the worst condition of any vintage pair I have ever seen or owned. The soles were worn through the rubber and down to the foam, they had paint on them and were dirty as hell. It took a couple of hours of cleaning before I shipped them to our Instagram buddy and skilled cobbler craftsman @vintage_trainer_repairs68 over in the UK who fixed the worn, warped and brittle soles.
Before I post the photos of how gnarly these sneakers were here’s what they looked like after the midsole and repair. They came out great.
This is what they looked like prior to the repair. They were all jacked up with brittle, bent and warped soles. FUBAR…
The midsole had been worn all the way through the rubber. Damn.
Due to the level of grime on these shoes I went hard at them with detergent using an old toothbrush to clean the nylon and suede. I don’t usually recommend doing this with vintage sneakers but this case needed the next level of cleaning so I threw them in the washer machine. (Don’t try that at home if you care about your old school sneakers. Instead I recommend taking them to Jason Markk for cleaning.)
Here are some photos of the cleaning process. I removed the laces and let them soak in a mixture of water and detergent then I threw them into the washer machine with the sneakers. The washer machine removed a lot of the soot and brought out the color when they sun dried...
Here’s a before and after photo..
If you have any pairs of vintage kicks that you want to get repaired I highly recommend checking in with @vintage_trainer_repairs68 over on Instagram. Tell him The Deffest sent you. 😎
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.
Vintage 1970s Kinney NBA branded sneakers sporting the upside down swoosh. For more info on these rare and collectible sneaks you can see the other pair we posted here and their old 70s ads here and here. We also posted a photo of the Nike Le Village sneaker from the late 1970s below that inspired these Kinney sneakers at the bottom of this page.
Inspired by the Nike ‘Le Village’….
Vintage Nike Le Village - images credit to Jun.Cooper on Instagram