I mine for 100-year-old jeans | Hacker News Reader

I mine for 100-year-old jeans

theguardian.com

108 pointsedward25 comments

When 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-americ...

Why do you need to be "authorised" to sell really old jeans back to Levi's for their archive?

I 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.

very gibsonian profession

I 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??

Maybe more of a Hollis Henry-type obsession: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_History

I 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!! :)

Cayce Pollard would surgically remove all traces of branding.

Metal detecting is a really great hobby if digging for dirty jeans doesn't sound like much fun.

Given the crap they make today, it's no wonder people will pay more for older stuff.

What... 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.

I 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.

Mavi 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

"You gotta take em off"

I 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.

Speaking 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.

<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.

1000x 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.

Why? 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.

Exactly. 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.

It'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).

Except now that $100k is returned to the economy for spending

Returned from where?

It is an economic fallacy that saved/invested money provides no value to society.

Returned from illiquid storage

Unless that storage is some form of physical cash horde, it's never been "removed" from the economy in the first place so a "return" is a meaningless concept.

Meh. People pay a lot for art.

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