This Man Paid $9,000 for a Pair of Donald Trump Sneakers

When Donald J. Trump showed up at a sneaker convention in Philadelphia last weekend to promote limited-edition gold-plated high-tops, there were plenty of boos from the crowd, but none from Roman Schaff Sharf) booed.

Mr. Schaff, a watch dealer known for his selection of orange-sized Audemars Piguets and Patek Philippes, ended up buying a pair of autographed “Never Surrenders” after bidding $9,000 during the day’s auction via the Whatnot app. “sports shoes.

“They’re still new — they smell like glue,” Mr. Schaaf said Friday morning, raising the shoes to his face and smelling them.

Above each ankle is something resembling an American flag, made up of red and black lines, and a blue box filled with sparkling stars and stripes. There is a T on the tongue and a T on the side. The former president’s signature appears in thick black ink on the shiny right toe box.

When Mr. Schaaf presented his prize, he was standing on the second floor of a small building in Southampton, Pa., that is the headquarters of his company, Luxury Bazaar. Apart from the shell of the 2019 Formula 1 car acting as a sculpture, the entire space looks like a vault.

Behind him is an office filled with vintage Louis Vuitton suitcases, old tapes from the likes of Jay-Z, Whitney Houston and 2 Live Crew, and an orange Pelican case containing two dozen watches. The watches are said to be worth a total of about $3 million.

Schaaf wore blue Nike

He joined the club because he proudly announced his acquisition of Sneaker Con on his social media channels, where he has hundreds of thousands of followers. Later, Trump extended a lunch invitation. So Mr. Sharf jumped on a plane and headed to the golf club with his 20-year-old son, Marcus Sharf. Marcus Schaff lives in Miami and runs HYPMiami, a high-end sneaker and streetwear boutique.

Mr. Schaaf had Caesar salad and chicken noodle soup. Mr. Trump munched on his signature burger and fries. After lunch, Mr. Schaff’s rabbi texted to ask if they had discussed the situation in Israel, but no such luck.

“It’s like talking to a friend,” Mr. Schaaf said. “It was a normal conversation, no agenda.”

Significant numbers of Mr. Schaff’s hundreds of thousands of followers on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok had a mixed reaction: They said they were unsubscribing from his feed because of his support for Mr. Trump. A Daily Mail article about Mr Schaff’s sneaker purchases sparked some outrage online, describing him as a “Russian oligarch” prone to “MAGA mania”.

Mr. Schaaf claims not to be bothered by the criticism. “I’m on social media,” he said. “I’m used to hate.”

He added that he is in the business of catering to wealthy people — many of whom are Republicans — who are happy to see him publicly pledge allegiance to Trump. But Mr. Schaaf did have a few things he wanted to clarify, including that he was not Russian but Ukrainian.

He said he came to the United States with his stepmother, sister and father in 1988 when he was 13, three years before Ukraine broke away from the Soviet Union and became an independent country.

“He had $4 in his pocket,” Mr. Schaaf said of his father.

The family moved to Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, and lived in a small apartment in a building run by Fred Trump. His father found work at a company that welded shop canopies and worked as a waiter on the weekends. His stepmother is an accountant.

After high school, Mr. Sharf served in the United States Army from 1993 to 1996. Records show he was stationed at Camp Pelham, Korea, then transferred to Fort Knox, Kentucky.

From there, he attended Penn State University for two years before heading to the Philadelphia area where he studied at a computer programming trade school. He then found a job at HealthPartners Inc., an insurance company. When his annual salary exceeded $50,000, he had enough to pretend to be wealthy.

“I leased a BMW 3 Series and bought a Rolex Datejust for $1,000,” he said. “It walked into the room before I did.”

Mr. Schaaf held out his arm, showing how he used to show off his Rolex watch. The watch now hanging on his wrist is a vintage gold Patek Philippe Nautilus sports watch that trades for 200 times his price, price up or down.

In the late 1990s, he worked in infrastructure support at Deutsche Bank. At the same time, he started selling watches on eBay. His side business took off and in 2006 he founded Luxury Bazaar. The company currently has 30 employees and two offices, one in Southampton, Pennsylvania, and one in Hong Kong. He lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife, Anna Sharf, and their two young children.

Schaaf said he firmly opposed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “I don’t even understand his goals,” he said of President Vladimir V. Putin. He added that in his view, Trump would be “the only president who can end the war by having both sides sit down and hammer out a deal.”

“I am a strong supporter of the First Amendment and the right to bear arms,” ​​Mr. Schaff said. “I also believe in same-sex marriage and abortion rights. Within limits.”

“To me, everyone is green,” he continued, citing a line from his Army days. “That’s what the military teaches you, because we all wear the same color uniform. The last thing I want to see is division. We are a group of people under the same flag.”

Although he has two pairs of shoes. One for each foot.