Anatomy of a sneaker drop

It starts before the shoe exists

The first Wolf Grey 5 sold on GOAT on November 12, 2025, three and a half months before Jordan Brand released it. These are pre-sales: a seller agrees a price for a pair they will ship once they have it.

The 848 sales before February 14 went for a median $399, with the middle 80% between $285 and $575 and one at $1,638. In the last two weeks the price fell almost every day.

One dot is one sale. We show a random 1 in 20 of all 66,587, so the dots also show how busy each day was. Hover or tap a dot for the sale.

Release day

On Saturday, February 28, 10,975 pairs sold: 5,471 on GOAT and 5,504 on StockX, at a median $320.

That one day holds 16% of all the sales we recorded for this shoe over 323 days.

The price finds its level in three weeks

Release week's median was $315. Week two: $283. By the fourth week it was $269, and it has barely moved since: $271 in weeks 5 to 9, $278 in weeks 14 to 27, $274 in September.

The spread tightened too. The middle half of release-week sales ran from $300 to $325; in September, from $264 to $283. Buyers and sellers had agreed on a price.

Then the crowd moves on

Each dot now drops into its week. Release week alone had 22,384 sales, and 60% of every sale since release came in the first four weeks.

GOAT averaged 26 sales a day of this shoe in September 2026, against 5,471 on release day.

The hole in StockX's bars from May 9 to July 3 is a gap in our StockX data feed, not in the market. GOAT, collected separately, has no gap.

Your size sets your premium

Once the price settled (day 28 on), small sizes cost the most. GOAT sales in sizes 8 and under went for a median $289, against $272 for sizes 9 to 11 (1,373 and 7,404 sales; rank-sum test p < 0.001).

Size 7 sold for $306, size 10 for $270. At the top, size 13 matched the middle ($269) but 15, the largest size with 30+ sales, fetched $310.

GOAT only: our StockX records do not include the size. Sizes with fewer than 30 sales are left out.

GOAT or StockX barely mattered

Release week: GOAT $318, StockX $314. Across the 24 weeks with 30+ sales on both, GOAT's median was higher in 21 by a median $7 on a shoe selling for about $270.

StockX sells new pairs only; GOAT also sells used pairs, and we cannot tell them apart. Fees and shipping are not in these prices.

Where it landed

In September 2026, 1,818 pairs sold at a median $274, +25% on the $220 retail price. 96.5% of those sales were above retail (95% interval 95.6% to 97.3%).

Eight in ten September sales fell between $246 and $309. In release week the same share spread far wider.

Not every drop ends the same way

Put the Wolf Grey beside two other big Jordan releases of the season, on GOAT, against retail:

Air Jordan 4 ‘Black Cat’ (November 28, 2025, $220) opened at a median $256 in its first two weeks and sold for $335 in September 2026, +31%.

Air Jordan 11 ‘Gamma Blue’ (December 13, 2025, $235): $332 to $295, −11%. Wolf Grey 5: $305 to $275, −10%.

All three were priced highest before release. The Black Cat is the odd one: it launched close to retail, then climbed.

Most drops end lower

So we ran the same comparison on every release we could follow for six months: 451 sneaker listings released between January 2025 and mid-March 2026, each with 20+ GOAT sales in its first two weeks and in weeks 25 to 28.

351 of 451 (78.9%, interval 74.8% to 82.4%) sold for less six months on. The median change was −15.5% (interval −17.7% to −13.5%).

At launch, 274 of 451 were selling above retail (median +10.8%); six months later, 167 were (median −12.4%).

StockX, which sells only new pairs, tells the same story: 669 of 882 listings (76%) fell, median −17.1%.