He spent millions collecting the rarest sneakers and cars. Now he’s over it.
Five years ago, during an idle afternoon at his lakeside vacation home in Ontario, Canadian financier Miles Nadal purchased 99 of the rarest sneakers in the world from Sotheby’s for $850,000. His wife was out wakeboarding with the kids, he was sitting at his computer, and suddenly he’d bought nearly 100 high-value shoes. Nadal recalled telling his wife simply, “I bought some shoes," as if he was describing buying a lone pair of Nikes from Zappos.
Days later, in a private sale, the financier, now 65, bought a Nike prototype sneaker, the waffle-soled “Moon Shoe" from 1972, for $437,500, a then-record-shattering sum for a single pair of sneakers. That 100-pair sale was Sotheby’s first ever sneaker auction. And Nadal took home the entire lot.
As Nadal, the founder of Peerage Capital, an investment firm with holdings in the real estate, self-storage and wealth management sectors, humbly said looking back, “It became the beginning of a trend that sneakers became walkable art." In the span of a week, this kooky middle-aged investor became perhaps the most unexpected sneaker collector in the world. He put them in a Canadian museum along with an array of more than 160 cars he’d collected over the years. Now Nadal has decided to cut short his reign as a sneaker collecting kingpin.
On June 1st, he’ll be auctioning off the bulk of his shoe collection. Around 750 pairs will be up for grabs at R.M. Sotheby’s auction house.
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