What is a person who collects sneakers called?

Sneaker collecting is the acquisition and trading of sneakers as a hobby. It is often manifested by the use and collection of shoes made for particular sports, particularly basketball and skateboarding. A person involved in sneaker collecting is sometimes called a sneakerhead.

A sneakerhead may feel that they are highly experienced because they own a number of sneakers, enough to be able to distinguish between authentic and fraudulent sneakers.

The birth of sneaker collecting, subsequently creating the sneakerhead culture in the United States came in the 1980s and can be attributed to two major sources: basketball, specifically the emergence of Michael Jordan and his eponymous Air Jordan line of shoes released in 1985, and the growth of hip hop music. The boom of signature basketball shoes during this era provided the sheer variety necessary for a collecting subculture, while the hip-hop movement gave the sneakers their street credibility as status symbols. The sneakerhead culture has emerged in the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic during the early 2010s.