'Oldest pair of jeans' found in sunken ship from 1857 auctioned for Rs 94 lakh

The jeans were found from the sunken vessel SS Central America, also known as 'Ship of Gold', which was travelling from Panama to New York

A very old pair of jeans recovered from a shipwreck from the 1857 has recently been auctioned off for a whopping $114, 000 (Rs 94 lakhs). The pair of work pants, which is being termed as the 'world's oldest pair of jeans', was discovered from a sunken ship off the coast of North Carolina in America where it had possibly sunk over 160 years ago.

The pair of jeans could have been made by Levi Strauss, the world's first known person who manufactured the blue jeans although the information could not be verified. The jeans were found from the vessel SS Central America, also known as 'Ship of Gold', which was travelling from Panama to New York and could not brave a hurricane and sunk in 1857.

The ship had 425 people onboard, a report in The New York Times said. The jeans were found in a trunk belonging to one John Dement who was a Mexican-American war veteran and hailed from Oregon, US.

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The pair of jeans, according to Holabird Western American Collections, is now white in colour and looks like miner's pants and has a five-button fly, which suggests it could have been one of the earliest pairs of pants sold by Strauss & Co.

The original colour of the pair of pants could not be clearly ascertained and the jeans have black and brown marks on them, probably due to other items in the trunk, the item description said. The pants were among the 270 Gold Rush-era materials sold in Nevada, US a week ago.

Gold-Rush era was a time of rapid influx of fortune hunters who migrated to areas where gold deposits were found in the late 1800s. The migration took place mostly in parts of America, Canada, Australia and South Africa.

The confusion on whether the pants are actually by Strauss' comapny or not is because the first known jeans manufactured by them was in 1873. However, some experts have also said that Strauss may have started manufacturing some of his earliest jean designs by then and this pair of jeans in question could have been one from the same. Although, the NYT quoted Tracey Panek, a historian and archive director at Levi's, who said that claims of the pair of pants belonging to Levi Strauss & Co are speculations at this point.