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Three years ago, in a mineshaft 250 feet below
a sunny Arizona day, two guys struck gold.

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Actually, better than gold: they struck denim.

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Buried under a century of rocks and rubble,
they found seven pairs of nineteenth-century

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jeans that are collectively worth way more
than their weight in gold—at least three

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hundred thousand dollars.

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That’s because crusty old jeans, even scraps
of them, are in unbelievably short supply

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and unbelievably high demand.

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And if you were conscious for even thirty
seconds of an econ class, you know what that

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means…

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people acting nuts.

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But why all the demand?

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It’s not like jeans are hard to come by
nowadays—at least a billion pairs are produced

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a year, and you can get these war crimes for
under 25 dollars.

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The market’s persistent thirst for vintage
denim has its roots in the decidedly working-class,

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sometimes rebellious, extremely American history
of blue jeans.

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See, in 1873, when Levi’s first patented
the riveted, indigo-dyed, cotton twill pants

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we know and love today, they were workwear.

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And to be clear, that’s workwear as in “wear
them while you work in the mines,” not “wear

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them while you work on a video about pants
for people who mostly aren’t wearing any.”

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And clothes for miners and factory workers
have to be durable and functional: which for

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early jeans meant large pockets in convenient
places, a high stitch count to prevent rips,

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and copper rivets reinforcing the parts of
the garment most prone to tearing.

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But it only took a few decades for jeans to
become an everyday thing—and an American

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icon.

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In the thirties and forties, cowboy movies
made jeans the patron pant of cool guys on

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horses; during World War II, Americans wore
them to work in the military-industrial complex

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at home and abroad; postwar, teens took them
up to be rebels, and soon enough, blue jeans

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were as American as apple pie.

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And as American cultural influence spread
in the mid-twentieth century, everyone wanted

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a slice of that pie: In Japan, importing jeans
was illegal until the late fifties, so a huge

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black market for secondhand jeans sprung up
in Ueno, Tokyo.

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In the sixties, Levi’s sales were banned
in East Germany, but when their economy was

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in the toilet in the late seventies, the East
German government requested Levi’s send

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them eight hundred thousand pairs to sell
to the cool-American-pants-wanting masses.

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But most Americans didn’t know how much
money their jeans could fetch overseas, so

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instead of getting into the resale market,
they wore them to shreds or cut them up to

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use as packing material.

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Demand abroad outpaced demand in the US by
so much that Japanese sellers would actually

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buy those packing scraps, stitch them back
together into jeans, and sell them.

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All this is to say, vintage jeans have long
since been both an American icon and a good

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product, so the demand isn’t a total surprise.

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But in their 150-year history, a truly impressive
parade of forces have kept supply low: from

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the Levi’s patent stopping anyone else from
making riveted pants until 1892, to a warehouse

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fire in 1906 that destroyed a ton of Levi’s
inventory, to post-Depression Americans clinging

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to their jeans instead of selling or replacing,
to import restrictions postwar, to labor strikes

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in garment factories in the seventies.

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So now, if you want one of those iconic pairs
of yesteryear jeans instead of these horror

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shows, you’ve gotta know how to look for
‘em.

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Luckily, it’s not hard for the layman to
date a pair of Levi’s.

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You just need to take them out to a nice dinner,
engage with their interests, be communica—nope.

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Stupid joke.

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Not reading the rest of that.

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Here’s how you figure out how old a pair
of Levi’s are.

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There are a few features that tip you off
to a really old pair: Early Levi’s, produced

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around the time of the Chinese Exclusion Act,
had a racist little label on the inside pocket

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that said “The only kind made by white labor,”
which is definitely not cool but definitely

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does tell you the pants are old—the company
stopped printing that sometime in the 1890s.

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Other signs aren’t as racist: for example,
the company didn’t start using belt loops

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until 1922, so a buckle back pair is likely
older than that.

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In 1937, they started covering up rivets on
the back to stop them from scratching up seats.

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From 1936 to 1970, the brand name on the little
red tag in the back had a capital “E.”

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Before 1967, Levi’s printed washing information
on the inside pocket, but after that, they

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started putting it on separate care labels.

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So if there’s a care label at all, your
jeans are from after 1967.

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If that care label has the Levi’s logo on
it in red or black, it’s from at least the

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mid-eighties.

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If that care label is huge and looks like
a little booklet, it’s probably from after

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2003.

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And on most of these tags, in the jumble of
numbers, you can find the actual time and

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place the pants were made: this is the factory
code, which is also on the back of the fly

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button.

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On this pair of pants it’s 513, one of a
few that mean “made in the USA.”

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This is the style of pants—550s—this is
some more info about the denim, and this is

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the month and year they were made, in this
case, January, 1997.

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So by the common definition of vintage—items
that are at least twenty years old—these

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are vintage.

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But they’re not the most valuable: they
don’t use the selvedge denim of the old

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days, nor are they from particularly early
in jeans history.

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If you want to find a really valuable pair
of jeans, the kind that fetch five or more

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figures at auction, you need to look a little
harder than my writer did.

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That’s what so-called “denim archaeologists”
do: buying jean jackets off of passerby’s

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backs, sifting through attics and trunks in
abandoned houses, and, yes, rappelling down

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into hundred-year-old mine shafts hoping to
find jeans left behind in 1888.

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And if you’re typing out a comment where
you refer to these denim archaeologists as

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“Indiana Jeans,” I’m sorry to inform
you they’ve already thought of that… but

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go ahead and post it anyway, it’s still
funny.

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Denim archaeology is a musty, dusty, risky
business—there’s a reason your parents

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taught you not to play in abandoned silver
mines.

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But a good find can net tens of thousands
of dollars, like the “mine-found” pair

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that—despite some noisy skeptics claiming
they’re not actually from the 1880s—still

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sold at auction for over 87 thousand dollars
[and are currently only available for viewing

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by appointment in Los Angeles, an appointment
my outside correspondent Amy obviously got.]

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So moral of the story: go play in those mines!

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Thar be gold down there!

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Or just, I dunno, thrift some jeans.

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I’m not the boss of you.

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