Talk:Authentic Shoes/@comment-46373270-20200717085405/@comment-3182821-20200717110439

Ebay is your best chance! There are quite a lot of authentic costumes out there - when the original Broadway production closed, the best costumes were sold at auction, and the older, more worn out ones were sold at a big "yard sale". These have gone on to be used by regional productions, so by now they're very, very worn out, but still awesome.

When the london production closed, the best costumes were set aside for the UK tour. Then the cast, followed by the crew, were allowed to take whatever they wanted as momentoes. A lot of the cast wisely saw this as an investment opportunity, and have gone on to sell their costumes for thousands.

More recently costumes get re-used and re-used until they're unviable, at which point they're used for scraps (which, technically isn't great, using old worn-out fabric to patch old worn out fabric? Use new strong fabric that would last far longer!). Small items like shoes are seen as "consumables", they're not expected to last many weeks so they often get binned - or rather than binned they might get saved as momentoes. But full costumes these days are too valuable to just let go.

Often costume pieces are auctioned for charity fundraisers, I believe the Broadway Revival sold a lot of shoes for charity? These items also often get re-sold as well.

There is also a bit of a black market, where costume pieces are stolen from active productions then sold on. This is straight-up illegal theft, but given that there are similar items legitimately in private hands, it can be hard to trace the provenance of a particular piece. Generally speaking, costumes from closed productions are likely to be legal, but if the production is still running, you need to ask questions.