Mining for 100-year-old denim

April 6, 2022 10:11 AM

“When a miner got a new pair of work pants, he’d cut up the old ones and use them for lagging around pipes, so there were a lot of antique jeans buried out here.” “They can be very attractive to denim collectors. People that are really into that piece of clothing will pay upwards of $100,000 for these jeans.”
posted by oulipian (23 comments total)

“They can be very attractive to denim collectors. People that are really into that piece of clothing will pay upwards of $100,000 for these jeans.”

The very idea of that makes me feel ill.
posted by Nerd of the North at 10:18 AM on April 6, 2022 [14 favorites]

"abandoned silver mines like buried time capsules, virtually untouched". How much heavy metal poisoning would you accept to recover some 100+ year old blue jeans?

I have a bunch of blue jeans in my walls as insulation. Shredded though, and presumably more from the Guess era than original Levi Strauss & Co.
posted by Nelson at 10:23 AM on April 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

Not quite the same, but there's an excellent book called Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style by W. David Marx you should check out if you're interested in fashion history. Part of it describes how in the 90s and 2000s Japanese denim collectors would come to the US and scour used clothing stores in small towns in the Midwest and other out-of-the-way areas for vintage decades-old jeans which they'd buy up in bulk and bring back to Japan. This is because, for various reasons, the US stopped manufacturing denim, or at least not to the old standards. So these used stores were goldmines of high-quality old denim, and while the coastal urban centers had already largely been picked clean by American collectors, the vast areas outside those enclaves had generally been ignored and were ripe for Japanese collectors to swoop in.
posted by star gentle uterus at 11:04 AM on April 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

If you'll pay $100k for very old buried dungarees, I have a 100+ year old bridge to sell you.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 11:33 AM on April 6, 2022

There's a whole 'nother rabbit hole to go down involving Japanese-made denim woven on vintage US looms exported to Japan when textile mills here stopped producing. Those high-end vintage-style denim jeans available from Japan seem like a bargain now in comparison.
posted by fogovonslack at 11:36 AM on April 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

"These (jeans) go on when I close my eyes
Every second of the night I live another life
These (jeans) that sleep when it's cold outside
Every moment I'm awake the further I'm away

There's something out there
I can't resist
I need to hide away from the pain
There's something out there
I can't resist"
posted by clandestiny's child at 11:41 AM on April 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

One more piece of evidence on why we need a wealth tax. I presume that anyone who's paying 6 figures (or even 5!) for a pair of jeans is probably paying less in taxes than I am.
posted by rikschell at 11:48 AM on April 6, 2022 [6 favorites]

The canyon between useful and historic is fascinating. I don't know what to do with that fascination, but it's neat. (Personally, I'd pay thousands of dollars to avoid ever having to wear denim again. But, to each their own.)

I've recently had reason to cut holes in the walls of my apartment, which is in a block-sized structure that was full of book printers and ink manufacturers in the early 1900s. (Sadly, most noted for a deadly ink-manufacturing explosion that I still haven't been able to locate exactly.) So far, I haven't found anything worth keeping, but I keep hoping.

A friend of mine found some amazing 1/2 cm thick paper sheets used as insulation in the walls with large handbill ad prints from the early '20s, in a different building. I haven't looked too hard, but I still can't figure out exactly what they were meant for. My best guess is that it was the printing press equivalent of blotter paper to remove spilled ink from the sides of type, but that's just a guess.
posted by eotvos at 11:51 AM on April 6, 2022

Is this where I drop a link to the amazing Jefferson Airplane Levi's commercials?
posted by dawkins_7 at 12:02 PM on April 6, 2022

I was also shocked at the $100,000 listed in the pull quote but in the article:

...and found out he was selling the pieces back to Levi’s for its archives – he’d sell them a pair of jeans for upwards of $100,000.

That's a little different than some individual with more money than they know what to do with. I also hope that statistic was the one time they found the equivalent of Serial Number 3 and it was for some reason a never worn pair of jeans that was just folded nicely in the mine 100+ years ago.

Ignoring the money piece this is fun in the way most archaeology (of ancient or recent things) is. People digging though cast-off daily stuff and finding what has become interesting since it was left behind always makes me think about the waste we make every day and what might happen if the room I was in had to be abandoned for some reason right now. What pieces would be junk and what would be valuable in 100 years? Would someone pay $100,000 for my goofy Lego Batman desk clock or a roll of duct tape (they haven't made duct tape like that in YEARS, man!)
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 12:19 PM on April 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

For 8th grade history I had the best teacher ever. One vividly remembered lesson focused on the California gold rush and she told us of how around the general stores in every small town the ground, muddy and unpassable everywhere else, was firm and walkable, and the reason for that was because miners would come into the store, buy a new pair of Levi's, and toss their old pair into the street, where they sunk into the mud, soaked up the water and became like pavement.
posted by chavenet at 12:19 PM on April 6, 2022 [5 favorites]

I have a 100+ year old bridge to sell you.

Has it been buried?
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:32 PM on April 6, 2022

"Very Old Buried Dungarees". New band name. I've called it
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 1:31 PM on April 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

Honestly I'd pay $100,000 for a pair of jeans that last that long while buried and wrapped around a pipe. Lately it feels like I can't find some that will last more than a year without getting worn out.
posted by fight or flight at 2:15 PM on April 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

I don't know why collecting old clothing should make anyone any more ill than collecting old paintings, jewelry or anything else historically or aesthetically interesting. There's maybe an argument about the appropriate price/ value, but the same applies to Darwin's notebook. The information from the notebook was well preserved without the physical book, so why care about it so much.
posted by zeikka at 3:00 PM on April 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

$100,000?! I remember when the going price for Levi's was a car.
posted by Theophrastus Johnson at 4:08 PM on April 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

Honestly I'd pay $100,000 for a pair of jeans that last that long while buried and wrapped around a pipe. Lately it feels like I can't find some that will last more than a year without getting worn out.

Short of finding some spare pair tucked away these were already considered to be worn out by people probably on average more frugal about what constituted wore out clothing than the average person today. And then they were wrapped around a pipe.
posted by Mitheral at 5:14 PM on April 6, 2022

Excavation-bottom jeans. But what about the boots with the fur?
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:57 PM on April 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

...and found out he was selling the pieces back to Levi’s for its archives – he’d sell them a pair of jeans for upwards of $100,000.

That's a little different than some individual with more money than they know what to do with.

A little, but not a lot: if there was no market for this kind of thing commanding six figure prices, Levi's wouldn't have to pay the middleman such an insane amount of money.
posted by each day we work at 8:08 PM on April 6, 2022

Save yer jorts, folks: they could be worth something some day!!
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 1:24 AM on April 7, 2022

Remember: if your serge is not manufactured in Nimes, France, then it is merely "sparkling canvas".
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 1:26 AM on April 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

Projeacco

(Jesecco?)
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:57 AM on April 7, 2022

Salvaged selvedge.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 5:19 PM on April 7, 2022 [1 favorite]