Sneaker reselling prior to 2012 is time immemorial. We know for a fact that sneakers were trading hands back then because, well, we have hands. But how? eBay? NikeTalk? Craigslist? Flea markets? Puffs of white smoke? (Black smoke meant no sale). Resell was pretty archaic back then. To consider how far we’ve come, consider that Flight Club opened two years before the iPhone launched.
Campless published its first blog post in August of 2013. This was the sneaker blog era and damn were those guys good. Twenty-eight different blogs all with “sole”, “kick” or “sneaker” in their name, all covering all three forms of sneaker content: release dates, retail prices, and pictures.
Campless was different. It was the first “sneakerhead data” company – as if that’s a thing. But at least it was something new during a time when the resell sneaker market was still largely taboo for sneaker blogs. This tracks, as we all took our cues from the big brands and their historical doctrine of pretending the whole thing didn’t exist.
So Campless toed the line but did so in a way that was functional. It was extremely useful to real sneakerheads. Most collectors understood that the resell market was a necessary part of the sneaker ecosystem but were left to their own devices to find, navigate, and understand it. Campless provided a solution.
Campless created a way to easily understand the true value of sneakers – whether you wanted to buy, sell, or own. Campless injected logic and reason into a marketplace that was, at worst, dominated by emotions and whims and, at best, swayed by a few cuts of heavily biased numbers. The best options were Flight Club and “recently sold” listings on eBay, but both had significant flaws, and we all knew it. Enter metrics like “average deadstock price”, “volume”, “volatility”, and . . . wait for it . . . “sneakerhead significance”, and now all of the future resellers of the world could make rational, data-driven sneaker decision making. The way Adam Smith intended it.
Campless was the product of an all-volunteer army. It was perhaps the last bastion of the good, old-fashioned, help-your-internet-neighbor-for-free era. The 17 of them almost all fit into the seemingly impossible venn diagram overlap of sneakerheads and data nerds. More than a few of the group never even met each other. They were a motley crew of sneakerhead writers, sneakerhead data analysts, and sneakerhead engineers all searching for their own (data) version of One-Eyed Willie’s treasure.
Campless’ success can be attributed to its two core tenets. The first was that each individual sneaker model and colorway had a single product page. The Jordan 3 Black Cement release from 2001 was different from the Jordan 3 Black Cement release from 2011 was different from the Jordan 3 White Cement release from 2011. And each product page felt like something you would find while researching equity positions in your Charles Schwab account and less like scrolling through Amazon searching for the best price per square for toilet paper. The second core tenet was the Campless blog. Those of us fortunate enough to have contributed to it, affectionately referred to it as – Freakanomics for sneakers. The blog was equal parts economic theory, sociological commentary, and bad jokes about late 20th / early 21st century pop culture.
We’re not big on theology around here, but we acknowledge that Christianity was onto something big with the whole pre/post time period thing. And while we wouldn’t fault you for suggesting that April 16, 2003 (MJ’s last game) be the modern day division bell, you would be wrong. Our “GREG-orian” calendar is demarcated by the date April 5, 2015. Doc Brown likes November 5, 19551. Sarah Connor favors August 29, 19972. And Corey Mason (Liv Tyler’s character from Empire Records) likes April 8, 19953.
All Rex Manning jokes aside, you’re probably asking yourself: Why April 5, 2015? Because this is the exact date that Josh Luber (Campless founder) met Dan Gilbert and Greg Schwartz (other eventual StockX founders) at a Cleveland Cavaliers game on Easter Sunday. The Cavs beat the Bulls 99-94 that day, securing their first playoff berth in years. LeBron fucked around and got a triple double. J.R. buried eight three’s. Josh wore a pair of Tiffany Dunk Highs.
Many people know about that meeting, but very few know that, at the time, Campless was teetering on the brink of extinction. It was being held afloat by the startup equivalent of Data’s Pinchers of Peril. The Cavs game was the butterfly effect moment. It changed the lives of Josh, Greg, and Dan, the thousands of people around the world who have and currently do work for StockX, and the millions of people who have bought and sold items on the world’s most efficient peer-to-peer marketplace.
To honor the 10th anniversary of this historic moment we’re very proud to present our collaboration with StockX: the ghostwrite x StockX “Campless” 400% ghost.
This ghost tells the story of Campless – the prelude to the story of StockX. Just as there is no Nike without Blue Ribbon Sports, no NBA without the ABA, no Tech Experts without My Home Computer Expert, and no Facebook without The Facebook, the story of StockX begins with the story of Campless.
ghostwrite x StockX “Campless” 400% Release Info:
BTW. Just in case you didn’t know all of the important movie dates mentioned above, we put them in the footnotes. Say no more, Mon amour.
Here’s what you need to know about the upcoming ghostwrite x StockX release:
- ghostwrite Release: #50
- Name: “Campless”
- Size: 400%
- Population: 100
- Available for Sale: 75
- Release Method: Blind Dutch Auction
- Release Date: May 27-29, 2025
- See more of the ghost: HERE
- This is the day that Dr. Emmett Brown invented time travel. ↩︎
- This is the day that Skynet went online, became self-aware and decided that humanity was a threat to its existence. It’s more colloquially known as “Judgement Day” by Sarah Connor and the T-800. ↩︎
- You mustn’t dwell on this day, because it’s Rex Manning Day. ↩︎
ghostwrite 