Tips on how to score some cool kicks

New York

SNEAKER Con, a gathering of shoe fanatics founded in 2009, brought 500 vendors and more than 19,000 people to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York late last year.

The heart and soul of the event was the trading pit, an area in the back of the 840,000-square-foot place where sellers, mostly teenage boys, were talking and holding up their sneakers, looking for buyers.