How the numbers work

CYKI shows two kinds of numbers: the market value of individual pairs, and the CYKI 100 — our index of the sneaker resale market as a whole. This page explains where both come from, in plain language. The short version: real resale marketplace data, snapshotted daily, with honest gaps where the data has gaps.

Where prices come from

Prefer to watch it? A 21-second film on what "worth" actually means here — the mechanics are below if you want the full picture.

When you look at a pair in CYKI, its value is the typical of the last few actual sales in your size — specifically, the median of the last five actual sales recorded for that size (fewer if fewer have happened, and no age cutoff: a size that rarely trades keeps its last real price rather than losing it). We use a median of several sales rather than just the single most recent one because individual sale prices can be one-off outliers — a rushed resale, an off-condition pair, an unusual listing — and a median of the last few ignores a rogue print without the number going stale.

If your exact size hasn't sold recently but the shoe is still trading, we fall back to that size's current lowest asking price. (A shoe that has stopped trading altogether is handled differently, below.)

If the shoe hasn't sold in your size, or any other size, in the last 60 days, we treat it as dead stock for pricing purposes. For these pairs a real sale always outranks an asking price. We price the pair at the median of the last five actual sales in your size, however old. If your size has never sold, we check one more thing: has it ever sold in a different size? If so, we use the median of the last five actual sales of that shoe in any size — a single confirmed sale is enough, since requiring two of them used to leave real, if old, trades sitting at $0. This is less precise than a same-size figure, because size matters: a popular size can trade well above a hard-to-sell one, and we don't model that gap. But an old sale is something someone actually paid, and on a shoe that has stopped trading, an asking price is only one seller's hope: a single listing appearing or disappearing could otherwise swing a pair's value from week to week. Only if the shoe has no sale on record anywhere do we use a lone asking price as the estimate.

If the shoe is still actively trading but your exact size has neither a recent sale nor a live asking price, we fall back to the marketplace's overall average price for that shoe. We'd rather work from a real, broader number than show nothing. But a real sale or asking price in your size always outranks this average when one exists — averages lean on what sellers are asking rather than what anyone actually paid, and on shoes that barely trade we've measured them running two to eight times above the shoe's actual sale price, so we only reach for one once nothing more precise is on record.

If even that average isn't on file, we take one more step and fall back to the same any-size measurement described above — the median of the shoe's last five actual sales in any size — as a last resort.

Once a pair settles on a sales-based figure or the marketplace average, we don't flip it back and forth on a single night's data. A pair we've already priced from actual sales keeps that sales-based figure even if the shoe shows a burst of trading activity elsewhere — we only move it to the marketplace average once a new sale of that exact shoe is recorded. The same logic runs in reverse: a pair we're pricing from the marketplace average only drops back to a sales-based figure after three straight nights with no trading activity, not after just one. This only governs the switch between a sales-based figure and the marketplace average for an individual pair — it doesn't apply to the CYKI 100 or the brand indices, which price their constituents a different way and aren't affected by it.

Dead stock — when we really do show $0. "Dead" means no sale, in your size or any other, within the last 60 days — that's what sends a pair down the path above. We only show a hard $0 in the one case that path can't rescue: no sale of that shoe, at any size, has ever been recorded, and no asking price is listed either. The moment a sale happens anywhere in that shoe, or an asking price is listed, the value comes back.

We'd rather show you a hard zero than a number nobody has actually paid. A pair priced this way isn't a claim that your shoes are worthless — it's a statement about the market's silence.

Every value records which of these it's based on, and where a figure comes from an older sale the app shows that sale's date alongside it — so you can judge for yourself how current the number is.

How condition affects value

Grade a pair — deadstock, very near deadstock, 9/10, 8/10, or beater — and CYKI reduces its market value accordingly, because a shoe that isn't deadstock doesn't sell for the deadstock price. Deadstock takes no reduction. The reduction grows as the grade falls, gently at the top of the scale and steeply at the bottom. Leave a pair ungraded and it's treated as deadstock — no reduction applied.

Each grade is a band rather than a single point, and the figure we show is the middle of that band. You can see exactly what it does to any pair you own: grade it, and the adjusted value appears on that pair's card.

That reduced figure already shows on a pair's own card today, marked "est." The same adjustment also feeds your collection total and total profit and loss today, so a graded pair counts at its adjusted value everywhere CYKI shows one — not only on its own card.

Be plain about where these reductions come from: they are not measured sales of used sneakers. The pricing data we receive covers deadstock sales only — condition-graded sales aren't part of that feed, so there's nothing for us to measure against. These percentages are our own conservative call on what condition costs, not a number anyone has actually paid for a worn pair. We'd rather tell you that plainly than dress a guess up as data.

The CYKI 100

The CYKI 100 tracks 100 sneakers chosen to represent the resale market across its main categories — Jordan 1s, Dunks, Yeezys, New Balance, collaborations, and more. The basket is drawn from a wider curated pool of around 150 tracked models, and its composition is versioned so past index values always reflect the basket as it was at the time.

You can see what it's doing right now — the current level, the full chart since the base date, and how each category has performed — on the live CYKI 100 page.

How the news feed is chosen

The news feed has two kinds of item. Items marked CYKI data are generated from our own market data. Stories from other sites are different: one appears only when its headline relates to something CYKI tracks or prices, meaning a brand with a CYKI index, a sneaker in our catalogue, or a release we price. We then show only a short selection per day, so a story that qualifies can still be left out, and a story about a brand or sneaker we do not track will not appear however big it is. Stories we leave out are not shown anywhere on the site. Some days nothing qualifies and the feed says so. Summaries are written automatically and link to the original story. A data chip appears when a CYKI figure for that brand is available, and it names its frame.

What the numbers are not

Questions

Spotted something odd, or want more detail on the methodology? Email privacy@canyoukicksit.com.