What sneakers does Philadelphia buy? Vans, and more Vans
Philadelphia's best-selling resale sneaker this summer was not a Jordan. It was a Vans Old Skool with a $152 median sale, and the city bought Old Skools at four and a half times the rate of the rest of the US.
Look at the best-selling sneakers in almost any American city this summer and you will find the same names at the top: the Travis Scott Air Jordan 1 Low, the Air Jordan 5 'Black Carolina', the Air Jordan 4 'Rare Air'. Philadelphia is different.
The city's most-bought resale sneaker from July 2 to September 30 was the Vans Old Skool 36 Souvenir in 'Black White', a shoe that ranks 36th nationally. Its second was another Souvenir colourway. Across all of them, Vans Old Skools made up 8.0% of Philadelphia's sneaker resale sales against 1.8% in the rest of the US, four and a half times the national rate.
Philadelphia is the Souvenir pack's biggest city
Nationally, the Old Skool 36 'Souvenir' pack is a solid seller. In Philadelphia it is the headline.
| Shoe | Philadelphia sales | Median price here | vs national rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vans Old Skool 36 Souvenir 'Black White' | 94 | $152 | 8.1x |
| Vans Old Skool 36 LX Souvenir 'Oatmeal' | 80 | $164 | 4.5x |
| Vans Old Skool 36 Souvenir 'Navy' | 56 | $163 | 6.6x |
| Air Jordan 4 'Rare Air - White Lettering' | 32 | $184 | 5.0x |
| Pharrell x adidas Adistar Jellyfish 'Crystal Sand' | 30 | $392.50 | 4.0x |
Counting every colourway, the pack went to 241 Philadelphia addresses, more than any other city we can see. Atlanta was next with 169. These were not one-day bulk orders: the Black White pair alone sold to the city on 47 different days.
It is not only the Souvenir pack. The Old Skool lead comes from 26 different Old Skool listings, and Vans as a brand took 9.0% of the city's sales against 2.3% nationally.
Philadelphia bought Vans Old Skools at four and a half times the rate of the rest of the country.
Salomon and ASICS: Philly's other lane
The other strong signal is trail and running shoes. Salomon took 3.0% of Philadelphia's sales against 0.7% elsewhere, also about 4.5 times the national rate, spread across 29 different shoes. ASICS sold at 1.8 times the national rate, led by the Gel-1130 (1.7 times) and the Gel-Kayano 14 (2.9 times, on smaller numbers).
What Philadelphia skips
The flip side is hype. The city bought the Nike Dunk at half the national rate, the SB Dunk at 0.48 times and the Yeezy Boost 350 at 0.44 times. The Air Jordan 12 sold at 0.39 times, the lowest rate of any family we tested. The Onitsuka Tiger Mexico 66, which New York bought at above its national rate, sold at less than half of it here.
Jordans still sell, though. The Travis Scott Air Jordan 1 Low 'Sail Tropical Pink' (61 pairs) and the Air Jordan 4 'Rare Air - Tour Yellow' (51) were third and fifth on the city's list.
Philadelphia pays about the same for the same pair
For 142 shoes that sold at least five times in the city, we compared each shoe's Philadelphia median with its national median. The typical shoe sold for 0.6% less here (95% interval 1.4% less to about the same). That is not a clear difference: 58 shoes sold higher in Philadelphia and 74 lower, well within what chance produces.
For more, see our Philadelphia market page, what the Vans Old Skool and ASICS Gel-1130 resell for now, and what New York buys by comparison.
How we measured this
Methodology: GOAT resale sales with a US buyer location, July 2 to September 30, 2026. GOAT resumed buyer locations in July 2026 for its best-selling shoes only, so this covers popular pairs, and Philadelphia is compared with the rest of the US on those same shoes. Philadelphia is the delivery city "Philadelphia, PA": 3,898 footwear sales, against 380,342 in the rest of the US. For each of 41 brands and model families, the city's share of sales was tested against the rest-of-US share with an exact binomial test, and Benjamini-Hochberg correction across all 41 (every figure shown has q < 0.05). A family counts as over-bought only if the lead comes from 3 or more different shoes with none above half the count; individual shoes need 30+ city sales on 10+ different days (11 shoes qualified). Same-shoe prices: the median of each shoe's Philadelphia median over its US median, with a bootstrap 95% interval and an exact sign test (p = 0.19). Sales are counted by delivery address, and some addresses nationally are stores, resellers or freight forwarders. This describes the summer's resale sales; it is not a forecast.
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