A Beginner's Guide to Copping Shoes

Lots of people want to start copping shoes. Some of us are in the game for profits. Some are collectors. And some of us just want to get the damn limited edition shoes on the day they drop and not a moment later.

Regardless of the real reason, sneaker copping is a popular, profitable, and difficult activity. As you’re always competing with other people, the scene isn’t likely to get any easier. Even getting started with copping shoes can be overwhelming - “proxies”, “servers”, “bots”, and all the other fancy terminology doesn’t make it any easier.

As we’ve been a part of the community for a long time now, we’ve decided to open the door and let more people into the game of copping shoes. We’ll outline everything that you need to get started with sneaker copping and how to grab the first limited edition item you want.

What is sneaker copping?

Copping is the process of getting one or more shoes, limited edition or not, during drops. Since everyone is using bots, such software is considered mandatory, especially if you want to get more than one pair.

Success of copping can be measured in many aspects. Most, however, would consider a full-fledged business, which creates margins through the sale of highly desired and limited edition products. As such, some may measure the success of copping through profits of which there are plenty.

Others may think of copping as a mandatory process if you want to get any shoes at all. Success would then be defined by the acquisition of desired items.

Regardless, there are several mandatory tools for all of copping. These are: proxies, bots, multiple accounts (or ways to make them), and a lot of time. Losing out on one of these is nearly guaranteed to make your copping a failure.

Popular sites for copping shoes

The best sites will differ based on your real location. After all, you’ll have to get the sneakers shipped. There’s ways to work around geographical limitations through freight forwarding companies, but you should remember that it will add to the costs of sneaker copping.

• Demandware – Adidas (all locations) and Yeezy Supply sites. But if you were to Google the name, you’d get Salesforce. These are websites hosted by their technology called Demandware, which landed them the name.
• Footsites – Footlocker, Footaction, EastBay, and ChampsSports.
• Shopify – Kith, Bape, JimmyJazz ,and many others. All websites hosted under the Shopify platform would fall under this category.
• Mesh – JDSports, Footpatrol, The Hip Store, and others. These are websites that use the Mesh platform. Note that most of them are within the EU.
• Nike – Nike.com and Nike SNKRS app. Fairly self-explanatory.
• Supreme – SupremeNewYork.com. Again, self-explanatory.

There’s more websites out there. These, however, are the ones that have the most drops with the hottest stuff. While you’ll be competing with a lot more bots, they’ll have more highly desirable shoes.

5 ingredients for successful sneaker copping

We’ve mentioned previously that several ingredients are required for successful copping, no matter how it’s defined. We assume you’ve already picked out the shoes and websites you want to get.

1. Sneaker proxies

No matter how you intend to do sneaker copping, it will involve proxies. They may, at first, seem like something that can be avoided or cheaped out on, but no good copping ever happens without a good set of sneaker proxies.

In simple terms, proxies are intermediaries between your machine and any destination website. Whenever your device connects to the internet, it sends connection requests to any website or app that you visit. Proxies take the request and forward it to the intended recipient, but modify it in a way to make it seem that they are the ones starting the connection.

As such, data from your device is never forwarded to the recipient. Proxies are therefore often used to modify the IP address and perceived location of the user’s device. They essentially make the user nearly impossible to track as websites think it’s a new visitor every time someone changes their proxy.

Sneaker proxies are tools used for copping. They are generally residential proxies (meaning they come from the devices of regular internet users) that are faster and more reliable than the average one. Residential non-sneaker proxies are somewhat more unreliable and slower, but can still do the job well enough.

Some users might opt to use datacenter proxies. They are IP addresses made in servers that are generally business-owned. While they are significantly faster and more reliable, the IPs are often known to belong to businesses. Websites will often ban them fairly quickly.

As such, the best option is always sneaker proxies. If you can’t get those, opt for residentials and if those are unavailable, datacenter proxies are your best bet. Always buy dedicated ones (as opposed to shared) and never go for free ones. The latter most likely earn money by selling your data and they are far, far from fast.

2. Sneaker servers

While you only route your requests through sneaker proxies, servers are computers that you take control of directly. Most household hardware is quite limited in power when compared to servers or business-grade machines.

As such, sneaker servers are an easy way to get a significant performance boost in both network and computing without having to spend tons of money on a NASA-like supercomputer. While they may not be necessary for lower volume copping, they’ll definitely come in handy on some of the super competitive websites or high value drops.

In short, a sneaker server is a computer that’s usually several times more powerful than what you personally own. You can run a lot more botting tasks simultaneously without sacrificing any speed. Popular options for a sneaker server include cloud service hosts such as Amazon Web Service or Google Cloud.

Note that servers do not remove the need for sneaker proxies. They are only an additional asset and do not replace sneaker proxies in any way, shape or form.

3. Sneaker bots

Bots are the number one tool you’ll be using. They are software that’s intended to automate every step in the shoe buying process. Some may allow you to even automate account creation. Others may require you to create accounts manually, but will take care of everything else.

Sneaker bots are where things get quite tricky. There are dozens of them available, from AIO bots (all-in-one) to semi-dedicated ones such as Shopify bots or Footsites bots to fully dedicated ones such as Nike bots or Supreme bots, there’s tons to choose from. Unsurprisingly, the developer of every one of them thinks theirs is the best.

Finding out which are the best bots is going to take you awhile. We recommend reading reviews, Reddit, talking with members of the bot specific Discord group, etc., of all the sneaker bots you can find Get as much information as possible before making a buying decision. Sneaker bots are expensive and you don’t want to be spending a ton of money on something that will be average.

Additionally, the best bots will keep changing over time, so be sure to always be on your toes. It’s a constant game of cat-and-mouse and you’re always competing against other people. Slack off for a little bit and it will cut into profits.

We can recommend, however, to look into AIO bots first. Most of them have been getting updates regularly and can even now outperform dedicated sneaker bots at specific websites. You also won’t have to worry about missing out on releases just because you chose a dedicated bot.

4. Virtual credit cards

Outside of limiting users by IP address, which is bypassed with the use of sneaker proxies, websites also limit buyers by credit card. Most people don’t have more than several debit or credit cards, which automatically limits the amount of purchases they can make on such a website.

As such, when copping sneakers, you’ll need quite a few. Regular banks are a bit iffy on issuing many cards or doing so frequently. Pretending you lost your card every few days isn’t a bright idea either.

Those in the game, however, have figured out a way around such limitations - virtual credit cards. Some financial service companies can issue cards that have no physical form, but otherwise act identically to a debit card. Popular choices for virtual credit card providers are Privacy.com (US only), Revolut, Skrill.

These cards just take a few clicks to acquire. After that, you can use them in any store as long as your account has sufficient funds in them. Removing virtual cards, again, is usually as easy as clicking a few buttons.

5. Cook groups

While joining cook groups is by no means necessary, we highly recommend everyone do so. Cook groups are small communities of people who are passionate about copping sneakers. Latest news, bot updates, reviews, drop monitoring, and gossip are all the things you’ll commonly find in these groups.

Almost all of them are created on Discord. Some of them are completely free of charge. Others, usually ones with lots of benefits, have a small price tag. The price of admission to a cook group can range anywhere from $15 to $100 or so.

Getting in these exclusive cook groups is worthwhile because it gives a leg up against the competition. All of the best drops and restocks are shared in these Discord servers. Additionally, you’ll find a lot of like-minded people who will be able to share their experiences and knowledge.

Final thoughts

That’s all you need to get started for copping sneakers. Once you lay it all out, the process isn’t as complicated as it may seem at first. All of the tech-related stuff have in-depth guides you’ll be able to find online, so even if you’re not familiar with them, we can almost guarantee it’s going to be a breeze.

The only thing somewhat worrying are the upfront costs. If you only intend to buy some shoes for yourself, it’s going to be costly. As such, reselling some stock to make up for the upfront costs is a welcome endeavour.