The Oldest Known Jeans Were Discovered in a Shipwreck and Just Sold For an Astronomical Price The pants were among 270 artifacts sold at the auction.

By Sam Silverman

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Courtesy of Holabird Western Americana Collections/ Liveauctioneers.com

A shipwreck struck gold thanks to a pair of pants.

The oldest known pair of jeans were among 270 Gold Rush-era artifacts discovered on board the 1857 shipwreck of the S.S. Central America or "Ship of Gold" off the coast of North Carolina in 2014.

The items, including the lid of a Wells Fargo & Co. treasure box and an 1849 Colt pocket pistol, sold for nearly $1 million, while the pants alone sold for a whopping $114,000 at Holabird Western Americana Collections in Reno, Nevada.

The pants, which look like white miner's pants with a five-button fly, had some believing they had ties to Levi Strauss — but he didn't manufacture his first pair of jeans until 16 years after the wreckage in 1873, per CBS News.

Other historians have suggested the pants were an early prototype of the signature jeans we know today, but Levi's Historian and Archive Director, Tracey Panek, shut down those theories in an email to the Associated Press, saying the origin theories are "speculation," and that the "pants are not Levi's nor do I believe they are miner's work pants."

Despite the discrepancy over the pant's origin, they still mark a huge milestone for Gold Rush artifacts along with the rest of the items found on the ship.

"There has never been anything like the scope of these recovered artifacts, which represented a time capsule of daily life during the Gold Rush," said Fred Holabird, president of the auction company, told CBS News.

Sam Silverman

Content Strategy Editor

Sam Silverman is a content strategy editor at Entrepreneur Media. She specializes in search engine optimization (SEO), and her work can be found in The US Sun, Nicki Swift, In Touch Weekly, Life & Style and Health. She writes for our news team with a focus on investigating scandals. Her coverage and expertise span from business news, entrepreneurship, technology, and true crime, to the latest in entertainment and TV news. Sam is a graduate of Lehigh University and currently resides in NYC. 

Want to be an Entrepreneur Leadership Network contributor? Apply now to join.

Editor's Pick

Business News

JPMorgan Shuts Down Internal Message Board Comments After Employees React to Return-to-Office Mandate

Employees were given the option to leave comments about the RTO mandate with their first and last names on display — and they did not hold back.

Business Ideas

70 Small Business Ideas to Start in 2025

We put together a list of the best, most profitable small business ideas for entrepreneurs to pursue in 2025.

Starting a Business

Starting From Scratch

Here's what you need to know before you launch your big-time food product.

Business News

Zillow Predicts These 10 Places Will Have the Hottest Housing Markets in 2025

Zillow predicted that the hottest housing market of 2025 will be Buffalo, New York. Here's why.

Business News

'Masculine Energy Is Good': Mark Zuckerberg Tells Joe Rogan He Thinks Companies Need More Aggression

On the most recent episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said corporate culture has become "neutered."

Business News

'More Soul-Crushing Than Ever': Popular Hiring Platform Finds Around 20% of Its Postings Were 'Ghost Jobs'

Is that job listing too good to be true? There's a one-in-five chance that it might be.