Oldest known pair of jeans in the world pulled from shipwreck, sold at auction
CTV
Pulled from a sunken trunk at an 1857 shipwreck off the coast of North Carolina, work pants that auction officials describe as the oldest known pair of jeans in the world have sold for US$114,000.
Pulled from a sunken trunk at an 1857 shipwreck off the coast of North Carolina, work pants that auction officials describe as the oldest known pair of jeans in the world have sold for US$114,000.
The white, heavy-duty miner's pants with a five-button fly were among 270 Gold Rush-era artifacts that sold for a total of nearly US$1 million in Reno last weekend, according to Holabird Western American Collections.
There's disagreement about whether the pricey pants have any ties to the father of modern-day blue jeans, Levi Strauss, as they predate by 16 years the first pair officially manufactured by his San Francisco-based Levi Strauss & Co. in 1873. Some say historical evidence suggests there are links to Strauss, who was a wealthy wholesaler of dry goods at the time, and the pants could be a very early version of what would become the iconic jeans.
But the company's historian and archive director, Tracey Panek, says any claims about their origin are "speculation."
"The pants are not Levi's nor do I believe they are miner's work pants," she wrote in an email to The Associated Press.
Regardless of their origin, there's no denying the pants were made before the S.S. Central America sank in a hurricane on Sept. 12, 1857, packed with passengers who began their journey in San Francisco and were on their way to New York via Panama. And there's no indication older work pants dating to the Gold Rush-era exist.
"Those miner's jeans are like the first flag on the moon, a historic moment in history," said Dwight Manley, managing partner of the California Gold Marketing Group, which owns the artifacts and put them up for auction.
