Hmmm. Interesting thread.

I don't collect them per se but I can recall with enough specificity the shoes I've worn over the years going back to HS and college. I was pretty particular about them then and now.

In HS, I was all about these Pumas. I probably owned about 6-8 pair total and when one pair got old, I got a new pair and relegated the older ones to the "I don't care if they get messed up" pile. I probably started wearing these around my freshman year in HS.



At some point, I picked up a couple of pairs of Lottos. I played tennis in them but also liked them for daily wear as well. Something like this (but not exactly):



The Lottos were worn at a river rafting trip in Colorado one summer so they got tossed in the garage when I got home. I was between the Pumas, so I think that was about when I got a pair of Nikes. I don't recall the brand, whether the Bruin or not. They had the light blue swoosh:



I was wearing these Nikes when I saw Back to the Future! Though slightly different from Marty's, I got another pair or two and wore them that year and maybe another. Then, I think that was about the time I realized I had a couple of pair of unworn Pumas (above) in my closet and got to wearing those again. I had bought 3 or 4 on sale at some store (they had them mis-marked) and forgot about them! Anyway, I was sort of into the Magnum PI look at the time and the all-white Pumas worked well for me. I couldn't pull off the rest of it, though (no big shock there).

When Nike Cross-trainers became all the rage, I liked them. Nike actually made a good product back then. I bought those and their basketball shoes to play pick-up and church league stuff in:



Hoops (something like this):



Also played softball in these:



Mine were black, and I think A&M players wore the same shoe for a season or two circa 1993-94.

Around the late '90s I switched to wearing running shoes for almost everything. Other than a few pairs of softball cleats, and another pair or two of basketball shoes, I haven't bought another type of athletic shoe in over 20 years. I've owned at least the following running shoe brands (in no particular order):

Brooks
Asics
Mizuno
Hoka
Saucony

Today, pretty much all I buy is Brooks. I also have some Hoka Trail hikers, Asics garage/work around the house shoes, and that's it!

I wish I had kept an unworn pair of those Pumas.

Edit: forgot to tell a (somewhat) funny story about other shoes. Late '80s I start officiating hoops and I worked my way up fairly quickly in the early '90s to small college. At that time, the SWC supervisor was assigning some small college and juco and the other guy assigning other small college stuff was on the SWC staff, so they worked closely together. Anyway, if you worked in a certain conference, DI-III, the conference would send all officials some shoes. So one year they sent me these Converse Cons we were supposed to wear:



Obviously, the ones we wore were Black with the white logo. The NBA guys wore the same ones. I never really worked many games in that conference (it was called the "Heart of Texas" at the time; I don't even remember the schools, but it was DIII), however I still got a pair of shoes. But the really funny thing about it was everyone HATED these shoes. At the time, most guys liked a brand called Avia. Now, Avia is just a brand Walmart uses to make Chinese made knock-offs but then, they were a decent athletic brand. Most of us wore this shoe:



the 800 something. Anyway, the SWC was under contract with Converse and guys were expected to wear the Converse shoes, so several guys went to a shoemaker and had their Converse shoe logos cut out (or duplicated) and somehow sewn into their Avias! One older guy went so far as to have his old Riddell or Spot-bilt Ripple sole shoes coaches in the '60s wore in football done the same way. He had worn those things for years and didn't want to quit.



My dad had a pair of those monstrosities years ago! I had almost forgotten about them when I heard about the guy wearing them on the court in Division I games.