After my freshman year of high school cross country when I stubbornly refused to wear racing spikes, I made one of the better decisions of my formative years and allowed my mother to purchase me my first set of racers for my sophomore season. Somehow, my not always sports-savvy mom found reasonably priced Nike Jasari shoes that would in a short time become a collector's item.

She didn't, however, score like Jeff Wasson and Jordan Geller. According to ESPN, Wasson, a utilities man from Oregon, performed readings on the house of Oregon running legend and the inventor of the modern, waffle-styled running spike, Bill Bowerman. Though Bowerman died in 1999, his son, Tom continued to maintain the house and one day asked Wasson to help remove trees around the property. Amazingly, in the excavated area they found buried trash of old shoe relics, including an original prototype spike made when Nike was called Blue Ribbon. Of the dozen or so shoes and one of Bowerman's famous waffle irons, Wasson was allowed to keep the prototype; the rest were sent to Nike's archives.

Wasson held on to the shoe for a few years, unsure of its true value (attempts to contact Nike were unsuccessful), until he brought it out one day to show a running-minded neighbor, who was "shocked" when he saw it. Still, Wasson nearly swapped it for a set of new golf clubs (presumably not high end clubs) for his son, before spotting shoe collector Jordan Gellar on an episode of "Pawn Stars." He contacted the sneaker head. After some debate -- given the lack of precedent for such a shoe -- the two agreed on a $1,500 exchange, according to ESPN.

"This is the first real prototype that I've ever seen come to market," Geller said. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime find for someone like me."

The prototype was given out during the 1972 Olympic trials in Eugene, OR, a prelude to the historical 1972 Munich games and the race that would define Steve Prefontaine's career. (He died three years later.)

Bowerman didn't bury the shoes in foresight of the shoe-collecting scene or as a way to store some of his most proud work, but because he viewed them as trash. His house was on too steep of a hill for garbage trucks to reach, so he either burned garbage or threw it in the backyard, according to ESPN.

"This shoe is really special," Gellar said. "Not because Drake or Kanye wore it but because Bill Bowerman made this from his hands. I almost want to go back to his house, with a comb and toothbrush, and go through his backyard myself."

After wearing those Jasari shoes for four more years (again a product of my own stubbornness and spurred by a $100 offer for them I received senior year), I realized that I should probably hang them up lest they one day split open and lose all collectible value. (A member of the girls track team in high school once sewed them together for me.) It was also in college that I realized they were specifically designed for the 800 meters.