The Air Yeezy sample Sotheby’s sold first still had its factory tag on

Heel height: ordered at 105mm, came in at 105. Lace length: 190cm. Pattern number: BMK066C1. Someone at Nike’s Feng Tay factory filled in the spec card by hand in December 2008. It hadn’t come off the shoe by the time Sotheby’s put it up for sale in July 2020.

The lot was one pair of Nike Air Yeezys in Zen Grey, size 9, listed as a prototype sample designed by Ye and Mark Smith. It was made four months before the Air Yeezy went on sale in April 2009. It’s a factory sample, and it isn’t the black pair Ye wore at the Grammys, but it came out of the same collection, and it went first.

Nine months ahead of the record

Bidding opened on 21 Jul 2020 with no reserve and ran online for a week, closing on 28 Jul. The pair came from Ryan Chang’s collection and sold on day two of Sotheby’s From the Archive sale. Complex later called it “a different, less unique pair” than the one Chang would sell next. That didn’t stop it closing above Sotheby’s top estimate.

Chang also owned the Grammy pair. Nine months later Sotheby’s sold that one privately to RARES, and it set the public record for a sneaker. Next to that, the Zen Grey sale didn’t make much of a headline.

The pair Ye cut up

Another sample surfaced in August 2021. Photos from @mc1snkrs showed an Air Yeezy wear-test pair in perforated white leather, with neon pink collar lining, grey suede mudguards and a sky blue patent leather overlay. The glow-in-the-dark outsole was there. The strap wasn’t.

Ye had cut it off himself to see how the shoe looked without it, Hypebeast and Sneaker Freaker reported. Hypebeast called the pair a likely one of one.

Records don’t always hold. In September 2023 RARES sold the Grammy pair at Goldin, and Complex put the loss at about 90%.