My mother died at 101 after a long and productive life. Mom was a bit of a hoarder. She always said that fashions always came around again. I thought she meant scarves and jewellry.
At her estate sale, a young vintage clothing collector and historical novel writer bought a pair of long forgotten ladies’ jeans for a quarter. She recognized them as vintage 1930 Levis. My mom’s maiden name was stitched in the pocket (she’d taken them to a mountain summer school camp in college). The vintage clothing collector recognized them as Levis and took them to the Levis Museum in San Francisco.
The museum got very excited because they had never seen this model and wanted them for their collecrtion. They hired the young collector/writer to research the original owner and to write her story.
The young lady conducted quite a bit of research on mom and finally found me — 2500 miles away.
Long story short, Mom’s jeans will be enshrined in the Levi’s Museum along with the story of her lengthy career and accomplishments.
And at the end, the writer found out that there are collectors in Japan who might have paid $1000 for those old jeans which my mom never wore again after college.
Imagine that! Being remembered for never throwing away a pair of pants!
That’s a great story.
I’ve got some pink pinstripe jeans from the early 80’s. I think they are Union Bay. I wish they were valuable, but most of the valuable ones are Levis. I cannot believe you had a pair from 1930. That is just crazy. Great story.
My sister used to have some crazy jeans. Some had double zippers and some were patchwork. Those dated back to the early 70s I think. Too bad my dad was very good about getting rid of old clothes.
Delightful story!
Now years ago, I inherited 4 estates, within about 2 years time. Decided to *tag sale* all the stuff, minus things families/relatives wanted.
There was a box of 33 1/3 LPs ...4/$1.00 ...which I thought was more than fair...just to unload them. A guy went through the box and pulled several albums ...one a Elvis recording....that had some sort of a poster folded inside. He paid his quarter, then took me aside, to say it was very rare and worth big bucks. Oh well.
Now at yard/tag sales I see people [maybe *pickers*] looking up items on their smart phones to find values of stuff.
Great story. Thanks for sharing that.
Great story.