Pair of 165-year-old Levi jeans pulled from a Gold Rush-era shipwreck sell for ... trends now
A pair of 165-year-old California God Rush-era jeans made by Levi Strauss in the 1850s is one of the 270 treasures recovered from a legendary sunken ship recently sold at auction.
The miner's work pants feature a five-button fly and are covered in black and brown stains from the trunk it was found in when a rouge captain discovered the S.S. Central America, known as the Ship of Gold, wreck at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
More than 7,500 bidders from around the world flocked to the auction house in Nevada to battle it out for jewelry, early Brooks Brothers undershirts and the lid to the oldest known Wells Fargo treasure shipment box, among other items pulled from the wreckage.
The jeans, however, were the main event and sold for a whopping $114,000 - the entire auction lot fetched nearly $1 million.
Some 425 lives were lost, and 153 people were rescued when the Ship of Gold went down during a hurricane in September 1857.
For over a century, many of their possessions - some still sealed in safes and passenger trunks - were preserved in the chilly, oxygen-deprived gravesite 7,200 feet under the surface.
The jeans are the oldest know miner's heavy-duty jeans found yet and were the highlight of the auction, where a bidder paid $114,000
The miner's work pants feature a five-button fly and are covered in black and brown stains from the trunk
Bob Evans, the chief scientist for every underwater recovery mission, said that the items might seem ordinary, but they offer an extraordinary glimpse into the daily life of the passengers and crew, from gold-field workers to high-society San Franciscans.
The Wells Fargo lid sold for $99,600 and the Brooks Brothers were bought for more than $1,000 each.
The Levi Strauss jeans are the oldest known pair of miner's heavy-duty work pants and the most expensive pair.
Dwight Manley, managing partner of the California Gold Marketing Group, consignor of the recovered artifacts, said in a statement: 'Those miner's jeans are like the first flag on the moon, a historic moment in history.
'We can precisely date them because we know the Central America sank during a hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean on September 12, 1857. There are no earlier five-button fly jeans in existence.'
There is 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 experts point to historical evidence that suggests links to Strauss, a wealthy dry goods wholesaler at the time, and the pants could be a very early version of what would become the iconic jeans.
But the company's historian
