Old soles generate new cash.

• Author: Delikat, Stacey
• Position: Society - Price paid for vintage Air Jordan tennis shoes

Does $24,000 for a pair of 1984 Air Jordan sneakers seem outrageous? That's how much one Japanese sneaker seeker paid for the pair, dubbed the "holy grail" by collectors. Sneaker fanatics, or sneaker heads, as some like to be called, scour the Web, pester faraway sellers, and shell out top dollar to score hard-to-find vintage models. Sneaker collecting, all the rage in Japan, the U.K., and Australia, is spreading in the U.S. Companies like Nike feed the market by rereleasing limited numbers of retro sneaks with slight variations. Mark Shin, owner of Seattle...