‘Like the first flag on the moon’: oldest known jeans fetch $114,000 at auction

The pair of jeans, recovered from an 1857 shipwreck, has sparked debate over whether they are a predecessor of the modern Levi's

Pulled from a sunken trunk at an 1857 shipwreck off the coast of North Carolina, work pants that auction officials describe as the oldest known pair of jeans in the world have sold for $114,000.

The white, heavy-duty miner's pants with a five-button fly were among 270 Gold Rush-era artefacts that sold for a total of nearly $1m in Reno earlier this month, according to Holabird Western Americana Collections.