(1/2) Back when I was 16 or 17 years old, there was only one Jordan silhouette that released per year. There was no such thing as retros. So at the time, the silhouette was the Jordan XII and the Jordan XIII. Yeah, I’m kinda old. …

A few years after I started collecting, retro’s starting popping up. Still, up until about 2010 or so – retro releases were few and far between. They actually had whole calendar years that they dedicated to one particular model…ie: one year with nothing but IV retros. …

So…in 2005, Jordan collecting was kind of difficult…or…easy…because you knew what existed and what didn’t. It was hard to find many retros and those that came out weren’t really all that great. I mean…a white and green pair of Jordan IV’s? Nah, I’m good. I’d say…from the time I was about 8 years old up until I was 25 years old (in 2005), I wanted a pair of Bred IV’s more than any other shoe. And they were damn near impossible to find. And back then you couldn’t just pull up the internet and find a pair. You really had to search. As of 2005, they had only released a couple of times and pairs were in the $400-$500 range. And $400-$500 shoes were absolutely untouchable in my eyes (at that time). …

Ebay used to have thousands of fakes floating around. And almost all of them had the same stock photos that the sellers used. Almost all of them looked like the one I posted above (I know this is not a Bred IV but this is the closest pic I could find of the stock photo style). …

By 2005, I was fed up on waiting for JB to re-release the Bred IV’s. I had just turned 25 and was living kinda reckless in Brooklyn…partying, etc. I seriously had thoughts like…if I die this year, I will have died with having never owned or worn a pair of Jordan IV’s…so…I made a rash decision. I came home one night after some heavy drinking…and I was thinking about my own mortality…I shrugged my shoulders…found a suitable pair of fake Bred IV’s on eBay, clicked ‘Buy It Now’ and went to sleep. Now all I had to do was wait…