Benjamin Martinez was on the hunt, waking at 5 a.m. on a recent Saturday to get his hands on the new limited-release Air Jordans.

He found them at a Wicker Park shoe boutique--and didn't think twice about paying $150 for the purple hightop shoes. In a bag beside him sat the white pair he had bought hours earlier.

"I only have about 20 pairs of shoes right now," the 21-year-old Chicagoan said. "But I'm working on it."

Martinez is a sneaker head, doting on rare shoes the way some covet baseball cards. Scouting for the latest versions of hot shoes from Nike, Adidas or Converse, sneaker heads help create a buzz in the crowded $20 billion athletic shoe market.

The popularity of sneaker culture spans races and incomes, drawing in a largely male population from across the globe: punk rockers, hip-hoppers and skateboarders alike. It is a renaissance of the mid-1980s, when the Chicago Bulls' Michael Jordan signed with Nike and his shoes were all the rage.

Forget pedestrian footwear concerns such as function; some don't even wear their shoes. Rather, sneaker heads are driven to find and collect the latest and hippest offerings, said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at NPD Group in New York.

"I compare it to the woman's quest for the designer handbag," Cohen said. "It's about the collectible, about getting the ungettable. This new generation has designated the sneaker the ultimate collectible."

Sneaker head culture, already established on the U.S. coasts and abroad, is growing in Chicago, collectors and store owners say.

"A bunch of people come in two or three times every week, just checking in to see what's new and hot," said Chane Wilson, 33, co-manager of Saint Alfred in Wicker Park, where Nike, including the limited Jordans, Adidas and Reebok are sold.

When a limited pair is released, it is not uncommon for sneaker heads to spend the night outside the store, which receives four or five shipments a week, Wilson said. Extremely rare shoes arrive once or twice a month and usually sell out in a day, Wilson said.

Bryan Lorenzana, 30, a Chicago collector, admits having had as many as 1,000 pairs of shoes at one point, though he has scaled back to around 600.

"If I had a house and a Porsche, then I wouldn't mind how much I've spent on shoes over the years," Lorenzana said. "But I have neither of those."

It's hard to quantify how many collectors are out there, but there are enough that a communications network--Web sites, magazines and books--has sprung up.

Niketalk.com, an unlicensed chat room, has nearly 55,000 subscribers, according to the Web site. Then there are sneaker magazines--like Sole Collector and Sneaker Freaker--that track release dates for new shoes and keep enthusiasts informed. There's even a documentary, "Just for Kicks."

"It's so much bigger than it was even two or three years ago because you've got all these young people ... supporting the culture," said Dave Jeff, the owner of Hyde Park sneaker store Phli, which opened in 2003.

To keep collectors interested, shoe companies are hiring artists, animators, rappers and other figures with street credibility to create new looks for their shoes.

Like the Nike Dunk, a classic model, designed by venerated New York graffiti artist Stash. Lorenzana, who owns a pair, said Nike made only 40 pairs, which were released at the ultra-exclusive boutique Collete in Paris.

Chicagoan Anton Murphy, who said he owns almost 300 pairs of shoes, owns Nike Ueno Air Force Ones, released in Japan for the annual Cherry Blossom Festival. Murphy, 35, reckons he can fetch about $1,500 for them online.

Other shoe companies have adopted similar strategies.

Adidas has an all-white Stan Smith model that can be hand-colored with washable markers, and Puma has paired up with high-end designers Neil Barrett and Alexander McQueen. Adidas has released NBA Superstar-model editions with team colors and logos printed on the shoes.

Dave Ruta, 31, a collector and desk manager at the Chicago Board of Trade, said companies have changed the tastes by making the more limited and desirable stuff colorful, which meant there was demand to make the regular stuff look that way too.

"It's kind of a lifestyle thing," said Ruta, who said he has about 75 pairs. "It's the rumor of rarity, and everyone wants to be special."

Cohen describes the importance of the sneaker head culture in terms of the "trickle down effect," meaning the impact that the buzz has on the commercial consumer.

"It's about associating yourself with the upper echelon of fashion, getting the urban consumer to influence the ... commercial consumer," he said.

Starting this month, Nike will release more than 15 new pairs of limited Air Force Ones through the end of the year to celebrate the shoe's 25th anniversary, said Mohammad Khan, co-owner of Snyx Galleria.

Khan opened his high-end sneaker store about eight months ago on the South Side, selling a variety of sneakers, including limited Adidas and Nikes.

For Nike, which controls an estimated 40 percent of the athletic shoe market, distribution strategy plays a major role in sneaker popularity. The company staggers releases, creating a shoe hierarchy, store owners say.

Quick Strike releases are sent across the globe to most cities, large and small. Tier-One releases are sent to a more select group of stores in a handful of cities, including Chicago. Tier-Zero shoes are sent to only about 10 cities in the world, store owners said. Hyper Strike releases, such as the Nike Ueno, are the most exclusive, with sometimes fewer than 50 pairs produced.

Nike declined to talk about its marketing strategy.

Local store owners say their customers come from as far as Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan to buy shoes because cities there don't have the selection Chicago does. Chicago sneaker heads look to the coasts or overseas for their next score.

A more universal problem for sneaker heads? Cash flow.

Murphy, who said he has friends all over the world after a decade of collecting, wants to go to Japan to visit a contact.

"I want to go, but the money is an issue," he said. "Every day I go home and I'm faced with two walls of sneakers, and I think, 'Would I really miss 25 pairs of the rarest sneakers in this world?'"

Murphy paused and shuffled some loose change in his pocket. "Probably."