Collector is 'beyond obsessed' with Nikes: 'I once had 600 pairs of brand new Air Jordans in my size'
Jordan Michael Geller of Portland, Ore., is “beyond obsessed” with Nike sneakers.
“I think about them all the time,” he says. “I dream about them.”
Growing up in Southern California, Geller recalls, “My parents would not buy me Air Jordans because they were way too expensive. So I had to wait until I was away at college and I had some of my own money and I could finally afford to get my first pair.”
It was 1996, and he chose the black and red patent-leather wrapped Air Jordan 11, which is still his favorite.
“Times have definitely changed a lot but my love of the Air Jordan has not,” Geller says, noting that he and his wife were married on 11/11, for which they each broke out a fresh pair of Nike Jordan 11s. “We wore them that one day, and we never wore them again.”
Geller started collecting sneakers, he explains, “much like other sneaker collectors, where I was just buying the shoes that I loved.” Eventually, he had an idea to build and curate the now-defunct Shoezeum, in Las Vegas, which was “the most comprehensive collection of Nikes in the world, and the world’s first sneaker museum.”
That was right around the time when his 2,504 pairs of shoes (only 10 of which were not Nikes) had earned him a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for the world’s largest sneaker collection. And though he shut the museum down in 2012, after realizing that “having a sneaker museum is just not sustainable,” he’s still collecting, and currently has around 300 pairs.
“At one point,” he recalls, “I had 600 pairs of brand new Air Jordans in my size. I’ve spent millions of dollars on Nikes over the years.”
The most money Geller has ever spent on a single pair? A cool $11,200, which went to charity.
Although he did get to meet Michael Jordan, back in 2011, he says he controlled himself from gushing and comparing their names and chatting about sneakers, and instead just shook his hand.
Geller, who has a law degree but has never practiced law, has instead been focused on being a full-time collector, trader and seller. And he still has enough shoes that the CEO of Nike pays him visits occasionally — despite the fact that he was once banned from Nike outlet stores for buying and reselling their shoes.
Since then, he’s made peace with the brand, which has flown him to All-Star Games and other events to show off his Jordans. Though his current passion is for the very earliest of Nikes — including an original Nike moon shoe found buried in the yard of Nike cofounder Bill Bowerman, who used a waffle iron to make the shoe’s signature soles.
Another beat-up pair in Geller’s collection had been worn by runner Mark Covert, and were the first pair of Nike waffles to be worn across a finish line in competition. He noticed the shoes on Facebook and pursued Covert for nine months, he says, before he could convince him to sell. Now, he says, “They’re my holy grail.”
The vintage waffles are, of course, among the many pairs he’d never sell or trade, either due to their history or what an athlete was able to accomplish while wearing them. “And other times, it’s about the chase, and what I had to do to get my hands on the shoes,” Geller explains. In any event, he says, “I’ll never stop collecting.”
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