Antiques Roadshow

GUEST: I was, uh, taking apart an old house probably built in the 1880s, in a mining town, uh, west of Boulder in Colorado.

Was pulling down the ceiling boards in the living room, and, and they just dropped out of the ceiling.

All of a sudden they were, like, right there.

APPRAISER: It seems a bit strange that that's how you'd find them, but actually, old clothing is often found, kind of, stuffed in walls or stuffed in ceilings as makeshift insulation.

So that would be my guess as to why they were there.

GUEST: Okay APPRAISER: So what we have here is a pair of jeans that I would date from between 1890 and 1910.

So one of the first identifiers of it being an early pair of jeans is the cinch right here, which is called a buckleback.

These we would be classifying as buckleback jeans.

So bucklebacks went away in about the 1940s, as the belt became more ubiquitous, but it allowed for waist adjustability, which was key because jeans were often worn by multiple different people working at the same place.

So as someone would clock in for a shift, they might throw these on.

So that allowed them to need to own fewer pairs.

These are not Levi's, but when we're talking about early denim, it's always relevant to talk about Levi's.

So, uh, Levi's was founded in 1853, in San Francisco, California at the height of the California gold rush.

In 1873, Levi's patented riveted clothing, which ostensibly was the patent for, uh, denim and for blue jeans.

In 1890, the patent expired.

And when the patent expired, many brands and manufacturers leapt at the opportunity to make riveted clothing or denim of their own.

And I believe this is a pair, kind of, shortly after 1890 when that patent expired for a few reasons.

Most notably, here on the label, you can see "Pacific Coast."

That's the name of the brand, as well as two bears pulling at a pair of jeans.

And this is heavily influenced by the Levi's two horses design, which you still find on the back of Levi's jeans today.

Two horses pulling in opposite directions, fruitlessly trying to tear apart some jeans.

These are rarer than Levi's.

I've only seen one other pair of Pacific Coast that was found in a mine in 2020.

But there is a larger collector base for Levi's, since that's the real name.

This is great condition for something like this, uh, that's this old.

It also shows, kind of, the history of it.

There's some marks here of candle wax, which would have been from the miners who would have worn these.

And instead of headlamps, they would have had candles...

GUEST: Right.

APPRAISER: ...and candles affixed to their helmets at times.

There's also a very interesting patch right here with a crotch rivet.

The crotch rivet was later done away with after someone sat by a campfire and realized that it may burn them.

GUEST: (chuckling) APPRAISER: Uh, so this is a very unusual patch.

I would say, conservatively, at auction, these would be worth $15,000 to $20,000.

GUEST: Wow.

That's incredible.

APPRAISER: If these were Levi's that were also bucklebacks and-and from this era, I'd say it would be something closer to the $40,000 or $50,000 range.

GUEST: Okay.