Men’s “Miner’s” Pants sold at auction for $95,000
Holabird Americana
A pair of “miner’s pants” recovered from an 1857 shipwreck were sold last week for a hefty price tag.
Additional items discovered in the shipwreck, including pistols, gold bars, and eyeglasses, are also up for auction.
This isn’t the first time vintage Levi’s recently sold for a small fortune: jeans from the 1880s sold for $76K in October.
Vintage clothing is making a comeback as Gen Z covets second-hand clothing from the 90s and early-00s, but one buyer last week took the trend to an entirely new level.
A pair of “miner’s pants” recovered from an 1857 shipwreck were sold at an auction for a hefty price tag: $95,000.
While the original color of the pants is unknown, the 5-button fly “strongly suggests these were an early manufacture of work pants sold by Levi Strauss,” the auction site Holabird wrote.
“The five-button fly is nearly identical, if not technically identical, to Levis of today,” the site adds.
CBS reports that the pair of pants is believed to be made personally by Strauss, who founded the iconic retailer in San Francisco in the 1850s.
The jeans were found on the sunken SS Central America, a ship downed in a hurricane in 1857, about 160 miles off the coast of South Carolina, according to CBS.
Additional items recovered from the Gold Rush-era ship have been placed up for auction, including gold bars, pistols, and eyeglasses.
This isn’t the first time Levi’s jeans sold for a small fortune in recent history. In October, a pair from the 1880s sold to a vintage clothing dealer from San Diego for $76,000.