Technical glitches delay auction of 123-year-old jeans

There are vintage jeans. And then there are the 123-year-old jeans up for sale in Maine.

The bona fide Levi Strauss & Co. blue jeans from the American Old West are still awaiting a new owner after technical glitches prevented the denim pants from being auctioned Saturday in Maine.

Daniel Buck Auctions & Appraisals said the jeans are pristine because they were worn only a few times before the owner fell ill.

“They’re brand-new Levis. They just happen to be 123 years old,” said auctioneer Daniel Buck Soules, who worked for 11 year on public television’s “Antiques Roadshow.”

<h2>The jeans were purchased in 1893 by a store keeper in the Arizona Territory.</h2>

Solomon Warner established one of the first stores selling American goods in Tucson, and he survived being shot in an ambush by Apache Indians in 1870.

He was a big fella.

The cotton jeans with button fly feature a size 44 waist and 36-inch inseam.

Unlike modern Levi’s, the jeans in those days had only a single back pocket. There were no belt loops; folks back then used suspenders. The denim was produced at a mill in New Hampshire, and the jeans were produced by Levi’s in San Francisco.

Warner’s jeans, which were stored for decades in a trunk, will be sold in the near future, Soules said Saturday evening.

Such jeans are valuable. A pair of 501 jeans manufactured in the 1880s sold for $60,000 to a Japanese collector in 2005, Soules said, and another pair, from 1888, sold six months ago for six figures.

David Sharp, The Associated Press