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I mine for 100-year-old jeans
- atomical 11y agoMetal detecting is a really great hobby if digging for dirty jeans doesn't sound like much fun.
- mhb 11y agoGiven the crap they make today, it's no wonder people will pay more for older stuff.
- dclowd9901 11y ago1000x better? This is buying an interesting life and interesting story from people who have neither but lots of money. We should be ashamed we live in a world where someone will pay as much for a pair of old jeans as an average salary.
- simoncion 11y agoMeh. People pay a lot for art.
- noonespecial 11y agoWhy? They didn't consume a bunch of resources or anything. They just relinquished their claim on said lots of resources to be the only guy in the world who gets to have a certain bit of dirty old fabric. It sounds like a net win for everyone. Rich guy provides (what ostensibly is) 100's of $k worth of value to society and all he asks in return is dirty old jeans?! Fantastic.
- hn_user2 11y agoExactly. Or if looked at in this specific guys case. Someone is willing to put two kids through college, and all he wants in return is some old jeans.
- semi-extrinsic 11y agoIt's even a win for greenhouse gas emissions. To an order of magnitude, each dollar you spend buying consumer products causes 1 kg of CO2 emissions. This obviously causes a lot less (as does most art).
- userbinator 11y agoI don't know much about how denim processing has changed over the years, but I wouldn't be surprised if a pair of jeans today will also last 100 years in the same conditions.
- flarg 11y agoSpeaking from personal experience (I bum around in Levi's all day) and the experience of others (my bro-in-law bum's around Africa in Levis) they don't last as well as one might expect.
- Thimothy 11y ago<rant> One year. One friggin year is all those shitty Levi's pants will take before breaking apart. I swear that it's all branding. </rant> Sorry, but I have given that brand too many a opportunity.
- digitalzombie 11y agoWhat... denim have a cult in the 2000s until now. Selvedge is a thing. There was prps, apc, nudies, new religion, paper denim, etc.. tons of fallen ones but it shows that there is a market for them and the quality are good you just need to do your research... I'm not sure if it has die down or not but the article talking about Japanese buyers sounds about right. There are tons of denim brands coming from Japan. These denim are pretty nice and quality.
- mhb 11y agoI meant Levi's specifically and am referring to the thickness of the material and the accuracy of the size which now seems to have an error bar of about +/- one or two sizes.
- fixxer 11y agoMavi are pretty good if you're looking for something thicker that won't bust the crotch after a few months of near continuous wear. Remember: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lag1bXylX00 http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lag1bXylX00 "You gotta take em off"
- zakalwe2000 11y agovery gibsonian profession
- hluska 11y agoI haven't read Pattern Recognition in years. Cayce Pollard would dig in an old mine for 135 year old pairs of jeans, wouldn't she??
- aaronbrethorst 11y agoMaybe more of a Hollis Henry-type obsession: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_History
- hluska 11y agoI haven't read Zero History yet, but I've added it to my list. Thanks for the tip - I'm embarrassed to say this, but I forgot about that book!! :)
- shoo 11y agoCayce Pollard would surgically remove all traces of branding.
- personlurking 11y agoWhen I read anything like this, I remember this article: How Japan Copied American Culture and Made it Better "If you’re looking for some of America’s best bourbon, denim and burgers, go to Japan, where designers are re-engineering our culture in loving detail" http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/how-japan-copied-american-culture-and-made-it-better-180950189 http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/how-japan-copied-americ...
- ZeroGravitas 11y agoWhy do you need to be "authorised" to sell really old jeans back to Levi's for their archive?
- giarc 11y agoI followed some links to other sites and one talked about all the counterfeits etc. I imagine it is prevent a glutton of jeans coming to them by shady characters. By limiting the certain people they know that anyone that comes to them is bringing a legitimate pair.