With the current vintage craze and hoopla going on right now, sneakers have remained consistent in being a part of any vintage collector’s list. Nothing beats that all time high of owning something that has historical value before its popularity.
Enter Swoosh Effects: all the way from Dagupan, Pangasinan–a vintage savvy collector and seller who unearths historic pairs so that you don’t need to. He makes it possible for his customers local and abroad to acquire pairs so historic that it’s beyond belief.
We recently got to talk with Anthony Ribu, the main man behind Swoosh Effects. Sit back, relax and read on:
How did you get into vintage Nikes? Give us a backstory.
Actually, I love buying and collecting shoes from Thrift Stores, any shoes that caught my eyes, and also within my budget. I really have no idea if the pair is vintage, or from old release or not.
It started when the Instagram Mood Board / Fashion Inspiration accounts started as a trend. HIDDEN.NY, SEEREVERSEFORCARE, OSHFITS, etc. influenced me, I learned a lot about Vintage Nike Air Jordan 1s and Dunks. They really look good even the condition is heavily worn or trashed. They’re classic and it’s just a piece of history.
There I found out that I missed a lot of vintage pairs from the shelves at the thrift stores.
Did it start as collecting then selling or the other way around?
I really am a collector, but I got into random and different brand of shoes before. I got collab, hype pairs and I am paying some for a resell price because I keep getting an L on releases.
So I thought why not collect these pairs, they’re rarer than the newly released High-Value Collab/Hype Pairs.
As I transitioned to classic Nike pairs, I started to resell some of the random pairs I got, to purchase Vintage Nikes. Didn’t know that hunting, collecting, and curating Vintage Nikes is fun and challenging.
Why vintage Nikes? How did you get hooked?
Vintage Nikes are classic and just cannot be removed from the history of shoes. We all just know about Air Jordan 1s and Dunks. There are lots of good silhouettes from the 80s, like the Nike Skylark, Convention, Penetrator, Airship, Terminator, Big High, Delta Force, and a lot more.
Also, my other influences/inspirations to these Vintage Nikes are SNEAKERDENN and FOXTROT UNIFORM, the people I look up to. When you see these pages, you’d say “How on earth did they find and hoard these pairs?”
Among your stash, what seems to be the rarest and most expensive?
I don’t really have a big collection, I have this 1986 Nike Convention in Neutral/Natural Grey Colorway.
Can you share with us a wild find among your piles of pairs?
I found a good condition Dunk Low Mineral Blue 2010 from the Ostrich Pack for 900PHP.
But most of the pairs I got are found by my friends, local thrifters. So I am thankful to them.
Is it true that they don’t make them the way they did before?
Nike Pairs manufactured from 80s to early 2000s are top-notch, its very rare to find these days, but the materials used are incomparable to those recently released pairs.
How did you expand your reach for Swoosh Effects? We see global clientele!
I listed them on different platforms to sell these pairs. And I also engaged with other resellers/pages, It’s actually just a small community. We just help each other.
And one of the things that help me a lot is taking good photos of these pairs. It’s like curating an Instagram page but also selling. And I also used the photos of previous client/customers of them wearing these pairs.
Your message to our readers….
Read blogs or information or watch shows/vlogs about Vintage Nikes. Its educational for all the sneakerheads. It’s good to know the history of the pairs you’re collecting.
You never know, you’ll start collecting these pieces of history.
