Pharrell’s auction house JOOPITER is in possession of some new precious treasures, with the latest soon set to make sneaker history. For its fifth sale, JOOPITER will offer up three ultra-rare, unreleased Supreme x Nike SB Dunk High shoes for an auction appropriately titled “Chasing Grails.”
See, fellow sneaker lovers: these Supreme x Nike SB Dunks are first-iteration prototypes of the 2003 collaboration — essentially, the one-off designs which were never commercially released and never to be seen by the public (well, until now).
“Thought to be locked away in a vault, or destroyed, these 2003 one-of-one prototypes for the highly collectible and beloved Supreme Nike SB Dunk High, are amongst the rarest of sneakers to ever come to market, a complete set of each colorway,” Caitlin Donovan, Head of Global Sales at JOOPITER, says to Highsnobiety.
“The legend has it that this design was rejected by Nike, replaced by the iconic gold stars. From the collection of Ryan Chang, one of the most respected collectors in the industry, these three shoes represent the key elements of collectability — rarity, provenance, and condition.”
Despite tales of being sent through the shredder or locked away in some mysterious chamber only accessible by an elite few, the 2003 Supreme SB Dunk High samples are indeed alive and well.
On the Supreme x Nike SB Dunk samples, fans will notice gilded Nike Futura logos instead of the golden stars seen on the actual released 2003 pairs and the 2021 SB Dunk Low collaboration.
As revealed by Donovan, the shimmery Swooshes apparently didn’t get the thumbs up and got scrapped. So then, it was back to the drawing board, and thus Supreme’s starry Dunks were born.
Set to hit JOOPITER’s website starting on September 26, the Supreme x Nike SB Dunks prototypes appear in the classic colorways of Red, Columbia Blue, and Orange, inspired by Nike’s “Be True to Your School” pack from the 80s.
JOOPITER acquired the pairs from renowned sneaker collector Ryan Chang,…
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