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is perhaps the first year, in fact, that the Air Jordan or any other athletic footwear will be considered collectible the instant it hits store shelves. Some stores are taking deposits on the $140 model and are already sold out. Others--such as Niketown in Beverly Hills--anticipate lines and even a one-day sellout. "Better come early and bring your sleeping bag," warns one salesman. Fans buy them for different reasons. Many want a piece of the Jordan mystique. Some just want a collectible shoe that will appreciate in value; others think their Jordan-assisted engineering is unbeatable on the court. "I think Air Jordans are revolutionary jordan shoes for sale basketball shoes," says Okubo, who plays basketball at Venice Beach in every pair of his half-dozen Air Jordans. "The design, the style, the color. . . ." Although competitors have tried to topple the 12-year reign of the Air .Jordan (Reebok with its Shaquille O'Neal model, Fila with its Grant Hill shoe), none has come close. Even in the early '90s when collectors complained that the shoe had a boring, generic design ("The fourth through the 10th models were not so popular because they looked really jordan shoes similar and people were tired of them," says a collector), it remained the most prestigious shoe in the sports world. Nike keeps a tight leash on the Air Jordan, keeping catalog pictures from retailers until the weeks before its release, limiting information (Nike representatives did not respond to interview requests for this story) and limiting supplies so that few stores expect to carry the shoes longer than a week. "They almost Air Jordan 7 7-7 create the anticipation and demand and then hold back the supply," says Larry Weindruck, spokesman for the National Sporting Goods Assn. in suburban Chicago. "The. Fenhui diviation Fui divination y're pretty astute when it comes to knowing what needs to be produced." Even advertising for the Air Jordan has become decidedly soft-sell, with little in the way of print ads and only a silent commercial featuring Jordan and his "jump man" logo in a flash. In Japan, fashion magazines circulated early pictures of the model in the same way car enthusiast magazines display "spy" photos of, say, an upcoming Porsche. It works, leaving fans even more giddy with expectation. On the Internet, unofficial Nike and Jordan Web sites circulate bootleg photos of the upcoming shoe ("The '97 Jordans!" gushes one) while stores get flooded with phone calls about the shoe's release date. "We don't even get a chance to put them on display," says the manager of one Westside athletic shoe store. "People put down a deposit early and they're out the door the day they come in."