Pricey pants from 1857 go for $114k, raise Levi’s questions. There’s disagreement about whether the pants have any ties to the father of modern-day blue jeans. 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. 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 plans,” she wrote in an email to The Associated Press.
