Jeans pulled from a 19th century shipwreck sell for a fortune

Key Facts

• 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 $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 $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.
• “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.

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