No Comply’s New Balance 480 Sits at Retail While Its Numbered Box Resells for More

No Comply and New Balance released the Hippies and Cowboys Numeric 480 on June 13 at $110 under style code UN480SMK, in-store in Austin first and through skate shops nationwide within days. Three months on, sizes are still sitting at $110 at multiple shops, the shoe has no StockX or GOAT page at all, and the only pair that has drawn a real premium was one sold with its numbered guitar-trunk box. The packaging is the collectible here, not the shoe.

The 480 is not the longtime skate staple this post originally called it. The Numeric version arrived in 2023, and Andrew Reynolds got the first signature colorway of it that September, so it is roughly three years old as a skate shoe. What is old is the shape underneath. The New Balance 480 was the brand’s first basketball shoe, a high-top from 1983, and the No Comply copy points back to that origin. It returned as a lifestyle model through a Junya Watanabe collaboration in 2021 before the skate build existed. NB Numeric itself launched in late 2012 out of Long Beach, with a team that now runs through Andrew Reynolds, Jamie Foy, Tiago Lemos, Brandon Westgate, Franky Villani and Tom Knox. One thing worth correcting for anyone shopping the model: the signature 480 colorways belong to Reynolds and Foy, not to Lemos, whose signature shoe is the 1010. New Balance’s own product page for the general-release 480 names FuelCell foam in the midsole and a plain polyurethane insole.

The No Comply build upgrades that insole, which is the detail most worth knowing. Per the shop’s own copy the shoe runs a black and arid stone suede upper reinforced with black tumbled leather, not the full grain leather this post previously described, with a frayed embroidered No Comply script logo on a black denim heel collar. Underneath sits a full-length FuelCell midsole and a custom printed ABZORB insole, which the standard 480 does not get. Red paisley and tie-dye run across the N logos and the insoles. This post previously put the paisley on the right shoe and the tie-dye on the left. No source states that split, so it is gone. The velvet was in the wrong place too. There is a purple velvet-lined stash pocket in the inner tongue, built to feel like the inside of a vintage guitar case, and separately a limited guitar-trunk box that went to the first 200 customers, individually numbered. Three lace sets ship with the shoe, black flat, black round and hemp rope, and bandanas went out with pairs while they lasted.

The story on the box is Austin’s, and the version this post ran was mostly wrong. Willie Nelson left Nashville after his house burned, around 1970, and landed in Austin in the summer of 1972, not 1971. His first show at the Armadillo World Headquarters was August 12, 1972. The venue was not built around him or around outlaw country. It opened in August 1970 and ran until a final New Year’s Eve show on December 31, 1980, so it was two years old when he got there. The detail about Waylon Jennings peeking through the curtain to find hippies and cowboys in the same room is not documented anywhere findable, and it should not have been published as fact. What is documented sits close to it. Waylon’s drummer Richie Albright told Texas Monthly that the first time Waylon played the Armadillo, hippies and cowboys were screaming and the band had never had a response like it. Nelson put it in his autobiography as rednecks and hippies mixing without too much bloodshed once they worked out they liked the same music.

At $110 the shoe carried a small premium over a standard Numeric 480 at $104.99, and No Comply lists it at $104.95 on its own site, which reads as a shop price rather than a second retail. Three months out it has not moved much. Drift House still has multiple sizes at $110 and No Comply still has a handful. Neither StockX nor GOAT has a page for UN480SMK, which for a shop collaboration is a distribution signal more than a quality one. The one real market data point is an eBay sale on August 1 at $249.99 for a deadstock size 11 with the box numbered 1 of 200. For contrast, the first No Comply 480 does trade, at a $125 last sale against $115 retail.

The No Comply x New Balance 480 Hippies and Cowboys released June 13 at 10am in-store at No Comply in Austin, at $110 under UN480SMK, with an NB Numeric demo and an Andrew Reynolds signing the same afternoon. It reached skate shops nationwide from about June 16, and sizes are still live at No Comply and Drift House. The Numeric 480 hub and the New Balance archive carry the rest, including the 983 and its ABZORB pods.

Source: Justfreshkicks

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The Sneakers Team

The Sneakers Team is the editorial desk behind becausesneakers, founded and edited by Nick Engvall. Nick has spent more than two decades in the sneaker industry. He built the original Eastbay Blog, led the first dedicated sneaker team at Complex, ran the first UGC and seeding programs at Finish Line, was employee number nine at StockX, and served as Senior Director at Stadium Goods. He hosts the Sneaker History podcast, and his first book, Small Luxuries: Sneakers, arrives in October 2026 from Motorbooks. Release details on this site are checked against the brand's own product information before publication, and anything we cannot confirm is labelled rather than stated.

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