He spent millions collecting the world’s rarest sneakers and cars: now he’s done with that

Five years ago, during a lazy afternoon at his lakeside vacation home in Ontario, Canadian financier Miles Nadal bought 99 of the world’s rarest sneakers at Sotheby’s for $850,000.

His wife was wakeboarding with the kids, he was sitting at his computer and suddenly bought almost 100 high-value shoes . Nadal remembers simply telling his wife: “Buy shoes ” as if he were describing purchasing a single pair of Nikes at Zappos.

A few days later, during a private sale, the financier, now 65 years old, bought a prototype Nike sneaker, the 1972 waffle-soled “Moon Shoe,” for $437,500 , a then record sum for a single pair of sneakers. This sale of 100 pairs was the first sneaker auction at Sotheby’s. And Nadal took it all. As Nadal, founder of Peerage Capital, an investment firm with interests in the real estate, storage and wealth management sectors, humbly puts it: “It became the start of a trend where sneakers became walkable art “.

In the space of a week, This Eccentric Middle-Aged Investor May Become the World’s Most Unexpected Sneaker Collector . He placed them in a Canadian museum with a collection of more than 160 automobiles he had collected over the years.

Nadal has decided to shorten his reign as a sneaker collection kingpin. . On June 1, he will auction off most of his shoe collection.

Around 750 pairs will be on sale at RM Sotheby’s. This includes approximately 500 pairs of Air Jordans (some from the mid-80s) and shoes by OJ Simpson, Tom Brady, Steph Curry and Joel Embiid . There will also be two pairs of rare shoes AirMag from Nike and a self-lacing sneaker designed to look like the futuristic sneakers Marty McFly wore in “Back to the Future.” The entire collection is estimated at more than $2 million, according to RM Sotheby’s.

144 of its cars and motorcycles will also be auctioned , including a 1913 electric vehicle and several valuable Ferraris, McLarens and Lamborghinis . This assortment is estimated to sell for more than $60 million, although RM Sotheby’s is still finalizing the assortment and estimates for the sale.

While some analysts expected the high-end sneaker auction market to slow down after the pandemic sales bonanza, recent sales continued to make headlines. In early February, a set of six sneakers that Michael Jordan wore to win his six NBA championships sold at Sotheby’s for a record $8 million.

The financier’s dream would be that someone could buy the entire collection together, like he did with his initial 100 shoes, but Nadal admitted that “the probability of this happening is not that high.”

Nadal first made his fortune as the founder and longtime CEO of MDC Partners, the owner of various advertising agencies. Nadal resigned from the MDC in 2015 amid a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into his spending and other affairs. . He agreed to pay MDC $8.6 million for expenses reimbursed at that time.

Nadal, who said he had been “the first person in my family to have a new car” , started collecting in 2000, when he bought his first high-end car. Other vehicles would follow and prices would eventually reach over $1 million each. He also invested in NBA jerseys, racing helmets and artwork. “I don’t like collecting,” Nadal said. “I’m passionate about collecting.”

Its various reserves were kept in its museum “Dare dream” on the outskirts of Toronto, with the cars lined up on a gleaming white floor and the sneakers housed in a space-age glass temple.

Nadal came to sneaker hoarding later, although he had long been interested in shoes. Decades before becoming an investor, Nadal had worked for companies like Asics and Adidas through his advertising company, the exact brands that would later appear in his archives.

“I knew a lot about the sneaker world, but I didn’t really know it as a collector. ” Nadal said. Sneakers, he thought, “would be something fun, a great addition to the rest of our collections.”

His passion for shoes quickly skyrocketed, like a rookie basketball player’s ego. “If 100 was good, 500 was better and maybe 750 was even better ” he said of his sneaker-buying mentality.

In the same way that art collectors hire advisors to shape their collections, Nadal hired Sean Go, a popular sneaker YouTuber, to guide his sneaker investment.

“Sean helped us move from a fun, random activity to a more deliberate and thoughtful collection. ” said. Since then, Nadal’s collection has expanded to nearly 1,000 shoes, including a pair of signed Air Jordan 1s from Michael Jordan’s rookie season, which he purchased in 2020 for $560,000 .

Nadal is a particular fan of the royal blue Air Jordan 1 and owns a handful of pairs, several of which will be up for auction at Sotheby’s. Lately, he’s been buying sneakers from Italian cashmere titan and favorite of the world’s rich, Brunello Cuccinelli. “I wear a lot of Cucinelli sneakers. “, said.

As Nadal gets older, maintaining his colossal car collection has become a burden. “There’s never a week that goes by that I don’t have one to five things to fix: parts replaced, etc. And it’s not as fun as it used to be ” Nadal said. Most of the time, he said, he gets around in a Chevrolet Suburban. He began to consider that it was time to ditch the sneakers as well.

Around his 65th birthday, Nadal woke up and thought: “that’s enough “. He remembers thinking: “Why am I waiting to die “to sell the sneakers? He said his plan all along was to sell his hundreds of sneakers and donate the proceeds to charity.

According to RM Sotheby’s, the profits from the sale of the sneakers are “100% committed » with the Dare to Dream Foundation, a charitable foundation that Nadal registered in 2022. According to the auction house, profits from sales of the cars will go to Nadal’s family office and are expected to be donated to causes unrelated to the foundation . Nadal did not specify which organizations profits from the sale would be donated to, saying it would benefit “the less fortunate, especially underprivileged children.”

Peerage Capital, Nadal’s company, owns Sotheby’s International Realty in Canada and claims to be the largest franchisee of Sotheby’s International Realty. He and Sotheby’s say he did not receive any special or preferential treatment at this auction.

Nadal plans to keep 20-year-old sneakers and cars.”mostly daily drivers “), but overall he feels relieved not to have so many things around him. “I want someone to take care of all this “, said. “I don’t want to think about it too much.”