Copping Kicks Early?

Depends on how early before the official release date you want to cop.

You can get the Bred XIs now from sites that many consider "grey market", "variant" or just straight up fake. Is buying a shoe that has a chance of being fake worth skipping the lines?

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Personally, I think you might as well wait till after RD to cop. Reason is that it's sometimes cheaper and you have a higher chance of getting a legit pair.

Ex. People were paying $350-400 for the Gym Green foams a week or two before the actual RD. After the RD, you could still go to stores and cop for 220+tax. In this case, people lost money just to be able to say they had em earlier.

Just wait on release date...

That's not always true though, usually shoes are between 50-100 above retail before release. Less people are buying them, because they want to try their hand at getting them for retail on release day. Once release day comes and passes the resellers will know that if you didn't get a pair you now have to buy from them and the prices can be anywhere from 100-250 above retail. My advice would be to cop before retail, but only 2 weeks early max or run the risk of them being b grades. I would only cop early if you expect them to be super popular with others. However, nowadays it's hard to tell how many of what JB will release, see fire red 4's, so many were made that you can still cop for retail even though it's an og colorway that is also very popular.