When Donald J. Trump showed up at Sneaker Con in Philadelphia last weekend to promote a limited-edition line of gold high-tops, there were plenty of boos in the crowd, but no boos from Roman Sharf. .
Mr. Sharp, a watch dealer known for his tangerine-sized selection of Audemars Piguet and Patek Philippe, ended up buying the signed “Never Surrender” sneakers after bidding $9,000 in an auction held that day via the Whatnot app. .
“They’re still new,” Mr. Sharp said Friday morning, as he held the shoes to his face and sniffed them. “It smells like glue.”
Above each ankle was a blue box filled with sparkling stars and stripes and a sort of American flag made up of red and black lines. A T is embossed on the tongue and a T is embossed on the sides. The former president's signature is engraved in thick black ink on the shiny right toe.
Mr. Sharp, showing off his merchandise, stood on the second floor of a small building in Southampton, Pennsylvania. That is the headquarters of Luxury Bazaar, the company he runs. The space looked like a safe, except for the outer shell of the 2019 Formula One car, which served as a kind of sculpture.
Behind him is an orange Pelican case filled with vintage Louis Vuitton trunks, old cassette tapes from Jay-Z, Whitney Houston, 2 Live Crew and more, and 24 watches worth a total of $3 million. There was an office.
Mr. Sharp wore blue Nike
He joined the club because he proudly posted about the Sneaker Con acquisition on his social media channels, where he has hundreds of thousands of followers. Afterwards, President Trump invited us to lunch. So Mr. Sharp hopped on a plane and headed to the golf club with his 20-year-old son, Marcus Sharf, who lives in Miami and runs HYPMiami, a luxury sneaker and streetwear boutique.
Mr. Sharp had Caesar salad and chicken noodle soup. President Trump enjoyed his trademark burger and fries. After lunch, Mr. Sharp's rabbi texted to ask if they had discussed the situation in Israel, but no such luck.
“It was like talking to friends,” Mr. Sharp said. “It was just a normal conversation, no agenda.”
Many of Mr Sharp's followers on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok had a different reaction. As a result of Mr. Sharp's support of Mr. Trump, he said he would unsubscribe from his feed. Some of the online outrage was sparked by an article in The Daily Mail about Mr Sharp's sneaker purchases, which described him as a “Russian oligarch” prone to “MAGA mania”.
Mr. Sharp professed to be unconcerned by the criticism. “I’m on social media,” he said. “I’m used to people hating.”
He added that he is in the business of providing food to people who have money. And many of those people are Republicans who were happy to see him profess his loyalty to President Trump. But Mr. Sharp had a few things he wanted to make clear, including that he was Ukrainian, not Russian.
He said he was 13 years old when he came to the United States with his stepmother, older sister and father in 1988, three years before Ukraine left the Soviet Union and became an independent country.
“He had four dollars in his pocket.” Mr. Sharp spoke of his father.
The family moved to Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, and lived in a small apartment in one of Fred Trump's buildings. His father got a job at a company welding canopies in shops and worked as a waiter on weekends. His stepmother was an accountant.
After graduating from high school, from 1993 to 1996, Mr. Sharp served in the U.S. Army. Records show he was stationed at Camp Pelham, Korea, then moved to Fort Knox, Kentucky.
From there, he spent two years at Pennsylvania State University and then moved to the Philadelphia area to attend a computer programming trade school. He then took a job at HealthPartners Inc., an insurance company. When his annual salary exceeded $50,000, he had enough money to pretend that he was rich.
“I leased a BMW 3 Series and bought a Rolex Datejust for $1,000,” he said. “He entered the room before me.”
Mr. Sharp held out his arm to show off his Rolex. The watch now hanging from his wrist was a vintage yellow gold Patek Philippe Nautilus sports watch worth 200 times its price.
Until the late 1990s, he worked in infrastructure support at Deutsche Bank. Meanwhile, he started selling watches on eBay. His side hustle took off and in 2006 he founded Luxury Bazaar. We currently have 30 employees and two offices. One is in Southampton, Pennsylvania and the other is in Hong Kong. He lives in the suburbs of Philadelphia with his wife, Anna Sharf, and their two young children.
Mr. Sharp said he was firmly opposed to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. “I don’t understand his goals,” he said of President Vladimir V. Putin. He added that in his view, President Trump would be “the only president” who could end the war by bringing both sides to a table and striking a deal.
“I strongly support the First Amendment and the right to bear arms,” Mr. Sharp said. “I also believe in gay marriage and abortion rights. “Within limits.”
“To me, everything is green,” he continued, recalling a famous quote from his military days. “That’s what they teach in the military. We all wear the same color military uniform. What I hate to see is division. “We are one people under one flag.”
Although there were two in his shoes. One for each foot.