Work pants that auction officials claim as the oldest known pair of jeans in the world were retrieved from a sunken trunk at an 1857 shipwreck off the coast of North Carolina and sold for $114,000 at the auction.
Given that the expensive pants predate the first pair formally produced by Levi Strauss & Co. in San Francisco in 1873 by 16 years, there is some debate as to whether they are related to the man who is regarded as the inventor of contemporary blue jeans. Some claim that historical evidence points to Strauss, a wealthy dry goods dealer at the time, and that the trousers may be an extremely early prototype for the famed jeans.
A variety of items were offered at the SS Central America shipwreck auction, including passenger receipts, clothing from the middle of the nineteenth century, a brass bell that sold for $18,000, a clear glass ashtray that went for $1,500, and cutlery and kitchen utensils like a double-spouted pitcher and warped cutlery.
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