1890's Levi's Lot 201 found in Mojave Desert

[beatle]

$36,099.00 ...got to go to the dessert and start digging...LOL

[beatle]

yup, a loaded honda accord, or vintage levi's 201?

holy shit, it actually turned more into a bmw:

winning bid: US $36,099.00

Exactly...

[Chicken]

alright, fess up. who's vintageboy1?

[Tarmac]

alright, fess up. who's vintageboy1?

You can see his purchase history. All he has purchased is a bunch of vintage Red Wings and Lee slacks under $100. And yet he bought these for $36K???

[dandandan]

its hilarious how the one guy bid 10k above the last one with an hour left and then lost by 100 dollars hahaha

[jimmyc]

I predict the ending sale price to be north of 30K

nailed it.

[beatle]

LOL - ur vintageboy1 ? ur cover is blown...

[james nicolas]

anyone else see the question by someone asking if they could buy the dirt from the pockets? wtf?

[soonami]

My favorite question was the one asking what kind of detergent to use to wash off the wax. I seriously hope that dumbass wasn't the one that won this pair because it would be such a waste

[selaviso]

if they were your size and you won them would you wear? for me i think id at least try em on before i display.

[andewhall]

Man....they are awesome indeed. Look how short the stitch length is.

[Tarmac]

if they were your size and you won them would you wear? for me i think id at least try em on before i display.

I wouldn't, personally.

There are plenty of lesser deadstock levi's to wear, you could buy a pair for $500 or $1000 or $2000. I just couldn't wear $36,000 museum pieces. It would be messing with history.

Levi's experts - is this top 10 known Levi's of all time? Top 5?

[soonami]

if they were your size and you won them would you wear? for me i think id at least try em on before i display.

Lol they are my size and it's be mighty tempting, but my deep fear (and legitimate too), is the 100 y/o jeans disintegrating while I try to slip them on and button them. Although, I'm sure they smell great

[selaviso]

^^^^lol yeah they are my size too if i knew for sure they would hold id try em on

and for tarmac: that is so true but if i was in that situation id be like fuck it i just spent 36k on a pair of jeans that are my size i might as well know how they fit on me but wouldnt that suck if the guy that did buy it thought like me and tried em on and they ripped in half.....ouch.

[CrashTestBrummie]

:eek: Decent price for the jeans, but I reckon the seller could have got more if he'd have spent some time on the listing - the amount of spelling/grammar mistakes/typos in the description makes him look like a rank amateur. And y'all have mentioned the lack of decent pictures...

Not that he's going to be bothered by this though, assuming the payment went through...

[po_boy_fuuma_hatesbargerz]

if they were your size and you won them would you wear? for me i think id at least try em on before i display.

I don't know about you, but when I'm on my deathbed, I will fondly smile and recall the day I had 36,000 dead presidents on my ass.

[selaviso]

haha ya for real.

[Paul T]

Not that there was any doubt, but Lynn Downey at Levi's has authenticated these.

The seller got a good price, considering the much rarer 1880s jeans fetched $42,000, and Levi's weren't bidding on these. But of course getting the bid aint' the same as getting the money.

I was telling someone last Saturday how eBay sales were tailing off, as shown by the mediocre price I got for my 1966 502s. Shows how wrong you can be.

A few more pix for the detail freaks, like me and Ande:

mmm, check out those early rivets...

and the early button design. I like that people asked for a factory code. As if Lev's had more than factory when they made these..

On the interior view, you can see how orange the stitching is - almost red in this (lousy) pic...

[crownzip]

Whoa, love those early rivets. check out how the copper shows no oxidation whatsoever. Thanks for posting the photos. Hopefully these will be well taken care of.

[tweeds]

Whoa, love those early rivets. check out how the copper shows no oxidation whatsoever. Thanks for posting the photos. Hopefully these will be well taken care of.

yes, how does that work out? wouldn't working [and sweating] in a mining environment oxidise the rivets badly?

[Charlie Delta]

Well jugding from the quality they are in I would say that they've seen use for half a year tops.

Also, wasn't there still a receipt in the pocket.

I'd say they haven't seen that much wear really...

[tweeds]

true, there're hardly any rips around the rivets or tears in the cloth

the condition they've been preserved in is really remarkable.

on a not-so-related note, does anyone remember the user ID that the levi's archives bids under on ebay?

[Paul T]

I can't remember, but I know Lynn Downey didn't bid on these.

Bid history is interesting; the second underbidder went through every price from $9k to $25k and had hardly any feedback. Apparently when they were found, there was a nugget of gold in the pocket!

I can only guess there was very little oxidation because conditions were so dry; or perhaps the shinier rivets were covered in sand. AFAIK this natural indigo denim wears quite slowly, so my guess would be they say a fair bit of use. Certainly they look more worn than my LVC 20s 201s, which ain't too faded after 7 months wear (none of it down a mine).

[Charlie Delta]

Errrrr.... I stand corrected yet again.

Damn second time in one thread, I should go back to reading up some more on it, ha!

[tweeds]

i wonder if the seller emptied the nugget of gold with the dirt in the pocket....whoops!

the stitching has really held up, apart from what must be the overlocking at the button area coming apart. reckon this is thanks to the short stitch length that ande's pointed out?

[Paul T]

Errrrr.... I stand corrected yet again.

What, about the wear? The beautiful thing is you could be right - we'll never know unless we find a raw pair of originals and get to wear them in... maybe we could club together for the next pair and do them as a project?

[tweeds]

we'll need to find us a mine first...

[Charlie Delta]

What, about the wear? The beautiful thing is you could be right - we'll never know unless we find a raw pair of originals and get to wear them in... maybe we could club together for the next pair and do them as a project?

Well, I went back to have a look at the pics another time and I'm kind of on the fence about it.

While there is some wear that would normally only occur over time, things like that can also be sped up by (for example) something like a jacket wich is also from a pretty "hard" material being scraped past one point/fold over and over again because of a repeated motion (hacking?), etc.

But like you said, one can never know for sure...

[Paul T]

It's interesting seeing these, because it reminds me how brightly-coloured the stitching is.

We always think of Edwardian/Victorian clothes as sober and restrained. But the Spring Bottom pants were made of blue and gold coloured denim. The 333 pants had purple stitching. Then these would have been a royal-ish blue, with bright orange stitching. Whether this was a colour scheme Levi's invented, or whether it was common before, I'd love to know. But they must have looked pretty whacky.

When Rikke Korff designed the Red range that was developed as Type 1, she wanted to capture some of that graphic, almost cartoon look that jeans must have had in the early days; these are a pretty good example of what she meant.

[robbie]

http://cgi.ebay.com/rare-1930s-WPA-Montana-belt-back-button-denim-JEANS-MT_W0QQitemZ310069588223QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item310069588223&_trkparms=72%3A552%7C39%3A1%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14.l1318

I saw these on ebay, and didn't want to start another thread. They appear to have been produced by the WPA back during the depression.