Shea Serrano is the Jawn Claude Van Damme of kicking it on eBay
The bestselling author on digging up rare & cherished gems
Shea Serrano — he’s a proud San Antonio native who wears shorts & slides w/ his socks hoisted to the damn kneecaps all day and still finds time to rain No. 1 New York Times Bestselling books down on the populace, such as Basketball (And Other Things), Movies (And Other Things) and The Rap Year Book, which became a 6-part documentary on AMC … Shea also co-hosts the new podcast The Connect w/ Jason Concepcion, where they unearth profound hidden links between movies … and he’s devoted tens of thousands of $$$ to beautiful things like helping undocumented students pay off student debt; helping people on Twitter pay rent; and supporting womens’ centers & antiracist community groups across the country…
Even doper than all that, though? Shea has been known to put in work on arcane eBay hunts, burrowing MILES DEEP into the search results and copping cool/weird/dorky s**t he’s been obsessed with his whole life …
Since Blackbird Spyplane is the No. 1 source across all media for “unbeatable recon” on dope under-the-radar joints, we asked him to tell us about a unique & cherished possession from “The Serrano Vault”… He replied with zero hesitation: “I’m gonna go with my Bloodsport poster,” so we hit him up on the encrypted SpyPhone to get the intel …
Blackbird Spyplane: You’re a big eBay boi — before we get to the Bloodsport poster, what kinds of things do you look for online?
Shea Serrano: “For me eBay’s similar to when you’re on Netflix, just scrolling through titles without any intention of watching anything in particular — it almost becomes a ritual in itself. So I might put in a combination of words, like, I don’t know, ‘Last Action Hero Action Figure’, and several pages will pop up and it may not be what I was looking for, but then I’m, like, ‘Oh shit, this is an autographed press photo they sent out, now I need that.’
“My three main categories are weird sports stuff, weird movie stuff and weird rap stuff. Basically, it’s fun to root around for stuff you grew up caring deeply about — except now you’re not poor anymore, which is awesome, so you can actually buy it.”
Blackbird Spyplane: I think that’s really common, at least among ppl who grew up without a lot of dough — I remember loving the Bordeaux 7s when I was 11, which aren’t even most ppl’s favorite Jordan, but they cost way more than my parents were going to spend. I never forgot about them, and finally copped a pair on eBay like 20 years later.