A pair of Levi Strauss & Co. jeans from 1893 sold for nearly $100,000 in a private sale earlier this month.
The exact sale price and the name and location of the buyer were not publicly available due to the private sale’s conditions, but Daniel Buck Soules of Daniel Buck Auctions in Maine was able to provide some insight on the big sale, The Detroit News reported.
It wasn’t a spur of the moment impulse buy, either. The buyer had a representative come to inspect the Levis jeans prior to his purchase.
The Levis were previously owned by Solomon Warner, a shopkeeper from what is now Arizona. The jeans come with the one back pocket design of older Levis and have no belt loops, since men typically wore suspenders rather than belts at the time, according to The Detroit News. They were reportedly still in good condition, as Warner only wore the jeans a few times before he became ill.
The large sale didn’t even mark a record for vintage Levis. A pair of Levis from 1888 previously sold for six figures, and a cheaper pair from the 1880s sold for $60,000.
