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Sotheby’s has unveiled a special license plate. This is the vintage ‘Nike 1’ license plate that was on the car of an early Nike member.
To learn about this license plate, you have to go back to the birth of Nike. It was a time when Nike wasn’t a brand that everyone knew. In the 1950s, University of Oregon track and field coach Bill Bowerman and his student Phil Knight entered the athletic shoe business. They imported and sold Onitsuka Tiger shoes without a proper office and named the company ‘Blue Ribbon Sports.’ We stocked up our products in a warehouse and drove them around college grounds in a truck to sell them, and word of mouth spread among track and field athletes.
As shoe sales slowly increased, Bowerman and Knight hired Geoff Hollister in 1967. Four years later, the company finally began producing its own shoes and changed its name to ‘Nike’. It was at this time that the Swoosh logo was born. Hollister traveled around the United States in a van selling shoes, and the license plate he used was ‘NIKE 1’.
According to Sotheby’s, Hollister sold sneakers throughout the northeastern United States. The ‘NIKE 1’ license plate is the last remaining trace of the Hollister van. Hollister passed away in 2012, and his son Tracy kept the license plate.
Sotheby’s estimates that this license plate is of great value because it symbolizes ‘the beginning of the Nike legend.’ It is currently being auctioned at Sotheby’s, with bidding running until December 18th. Sotheby’s expects the license plate to sell for more than $10,000 at this auction.
In 2019, Hollister’s relics were put up for auction. ‘Moon Shoes,’ designed by Bowerman and handmade by Hollister, were sold for $437,000, the highest auction price at the time. Nike enthusiasts are paying attention to how much this ‘NIKE 1’ license plate will sell for.
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