A pair of Levi’s jeans from 1880 was found in an abandoned mine by a ‘Denim Archaeologist’, the pair sold for over $87,400 in New Mexico.
The price is one of the highest ever paid for a pair of denims, purchased by Kyle Hautner and Zip Stevenson included a 15 percent buyer’s premium, 90 percent was paid by Hautner and Stevenson paid 10 percent, reported CNN.
This item is considered rare as only a few other pieces exist globally, being too delicate to wear and are kept in museums.
The jeans are supposedly still in wearable condition with splatters of wax used by the miners to light up the tunnels in the mine.
A label on the inside of the jeans reads, “The only kind made by white labor.” Levi’s told the Wall Street Journal that the company introduced the slogan after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which barred Chinese workers from entering the US, the policy was later scrapped in 1890.
The jeans are being held in a bank vault and can be viewed by appointment only, the buyers are hoping that a museum will purchase the denim pair for display.
In 2018, a pair of Levi’s jeans from the 1890s sold for over $100,000.
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