A
pair of men's work pants that auction officials believe could be the
world's oldest pair of jeans have sold for $114,000 (£92,010).
The white pants were found in a sunken trunk in a shipwreck in 1857 near the coast of North Carolina.
They feature a five-button fly and are believed to have belonged to a miner.
The
jeans were among 270 Gold Rush-era memorabilia that sold for nearly $1m
total, according to Holabird Western Americana Collections.
The auction took place in Reno, Nevada in the western US, as well as online, on 3 December.
"Those
miner's jeans are like the first flag on the moon, a historic moment in
history," said Dwight Manley, the managing partner of the California
Gold Marketing Group, which owned the artefacts. "There are no earlier
five-button fly jeans in existence."
The
items came from the SS Central America, also known as the "ship of
gold", a 280-foot (85-meter) steamer that brought passengers to and from
Central America to the east coast of the US during the 1850s.
The ship sank during a Category two hurricane in September 1857, killing 425 out of 578 passengers and crew members.
Passengers sank with an estimated 21 tonnes of gold coins and artefacts. The shipwreck was first discovered in 1988.
The
men's work pants were recovered from a trunk belonging to John Dement, a
man from Oregon, who may have purchased them in San Francisco, the
auction company said.
Auction
officials say the five-button fly strongly suggests the jeans could be
an early manufacture of work pants sold by Levi Strauss.
The
fly is "nearly identical, if not technically identical, to Levis of
today, inclusive of the exact style, shape and size of the buttons
themselves", auction officials said.
Levi
Strauss made the first pair of blue jeans in San Francisco in 1873, 16
years after the shipwreck that contained the miner's pants.
But
the company's historian and archive director Tracey Panek told the BBC
there is "no connection between Levi Strauss & Co and the Reno
auction pants", nor were they "miner's work pants".
"The
pants are not made of denim and were made years before" Levi Strauss
patented its blue jeans, she said, adding button-fly pants were common
in the 19th Century.
The
sale comes two months after a pair of vintage Levi's jeans from the
1880s - found in an abandoned mineshaft in the western US - sold for
$76,000 at an auction in New Mexico.
The
SS Central America shipwreck auction featured a wide range of items,
including passenger receipts, mid-1800s clothing, a brass bell, which
was purchased for $18,000, a clear glass ashtray sold for $1,500 as well
as cutlery and kitchen items including a double-spouted pitcher and
warped cutlery.
The remaining items from the shipwreck are set to go on auction in February 2023.
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