#ThrowbackThursday: Air Jordan XI Concord Low – The Brand, The History & The Public’s Dangerous Obsession

The Air Jordan XI Low Concord retro will be releasing this weekend on May 3, 2014. The white/black-concord will retail at $150.00. The Jordan XI’s is one of the top-selling kicks of all time and a must-have for sneaker heads. Michael Jordan wore these shoes during the Chicago Bulls 1996 championship parade. The first pair of XI Concord’s were released in November 1995. These Concord’s were the regular version and not the low version.

If you want to make a statement with your shoe game, any pair of the XI’s will help you achieve that. Whether it’s the Concord, Space Jams, Bred, Cool Grey or any of the snakeskin lows. The patent leather gives the shoe a shine-yet-glossy casual look and a lot of guys wore them to their high-school prom with their tuxedos. Many people and websites have named the XI’s as the best sneaker of all-time and it has been proclaimed the best Jordan shoe ever released. In my opinion, the XI’s are the best Jordan shoes ever made – followed by the XIII’s, XXIII’s (XX3) and XII’s.

Jordan recently released the XI Low green/black snake skins on April 19th. That was the first time Jordan released that color pattern in the XI’s and those sold out quickly. If you plan on purchasing the Concord lows, I would recommend getting a raffle ticket at the stores that are doing that. You can check at your local Finish Line, Foot Locker, Champs and Foot Action to see if they are doing the raffle. You can also purchase online at those same retailers or Nike.com.

Jordan should release more pairs of his retro shoes since they are in high demand. A lot of people get hurt with large crowds or robbed while waiting to buy his shoes or any other popular Nike shoe. You should be able to buy any pair of shoes without worrying about getting hurt or robbed. The online process isn’t the best due to all the traffic on websites all at one time. I purchased a pair of Space Jam’s online and received an email about five hours later stating that my order was cancelled due to the shoes being sold out.

I never tried the online option anymore after that experience. eBay is a good website, but  so many re-sellers are ruining the game for true sneaker heads. Many people want to purchase more than one pair and sell the others for profit. I think Jordan and Nike should do something similar like Sony and Microsoft does. When stores sell out of the Play Station 4 and Xbox One, they get more shipments in to meet supply and demand. Jordan should release enough of his retro shoes. Do it the first time or re-release up to 100,000 or more pairs in one or two months at the latest.

I plan on purchasing the Concord lows and this will be my first pair of Jordan’s since the pair I bought on eBay in August of 2011. The last pair of Jordan’s I bought at a store were the XI Silver Anniversary. I got there 15 minutes before Foot Action opened, me and about 20 people got the shoes without any issues (like all shoe purchases should be). I think the hype and risk is overrated for his shoes, especially, when you have LeBron’s, Foamposites, Kobe’s, Penny Hardaway’s, Kevin Durant’s and other Nike signature shoes available with less risk. The Foamposites usually retail between $240-250. Some of the releases draw the crowd of Jordan shoes and quite of few people have been killed over the Foams.

Majority of the shoes I named, you can go online or walk into a shoe store without the hassle and still get a quality pair of kicks to add to your shoe game. Whoever gets lucky and gets a pair this weekend will probably have one of top five kicks to be released in 2014. Just be careful dealing with a Black Friday-type atmosphere. It’s only a pair of shoes.