Pair of ‘Levi jeans’ dating back 165 years discovered in sunken ship
The oldest known pair of Levi’s jeans have sold at auction for £92,960, despite them being a little worse for wear.
They were salvaged from the SS Central America, a ship that sank in a hurricane en route to New York in 1857.
US auction house Holabird claims the jeans were potentially made by the Levi Strauss Company.
‘There has never been anything like the scope of these recovered artefacts which represented a time capsule of daily life during the Gold Rush,’ Fred Holabird said.
The jeans were among 270 never-before-offered artefacts from the California Gold Rush era, which all sold for £815,000.
Other highlights include a unique wooden lid to a Wells Fargo & Co treasure box, which sold for £81,220.
Keys to the ship’s treasure room where tonnes of gold coins and ingots were stored fetched £84,155.
The SS Central America was carrying treasure from San Francisco when it sank 7,200 feet deep in the Atlantic.
Hit by a hurricane on a voyage from Panama to New York City, 425 of the 578 passengers and crew died.
Several recovery missions were made between 1988 to 1991, and again in 2014.
Holabird said: ‘Insurance claims for the loss were paid in the 1850s and the company that discovered and retrieved the treasure starting in 1988 settled with the insurers and their successors in 1998.
‘With court approval, California Gold Marketing Group subsequently acquired clear title to all of that remaining treasure as well as all the items recovered in 2014.’
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