Someone paid $95,000 for this pair of jeans recovered from 1857 shipwreck

A pair of men's jeans recovered from the wreckage of a 19th-century steamer ship fetched an eye-popping $95,000 at auction last week.

The pants went down with the SS Central America off the Carolina coast during a hurricane in September 1857 and are remarkably well-preserved, thanks to the anaerobic environment where they were found.

But the continued strong winds pulled the Central America and its remaining passengers and crew farther away.

(Luckily, she'd been placed on one of the lifeboats and also survived.) All the gold also went down with the ship, and the sinking was at least partially responsible for the Panic of 1857. Several New York banks on the verge of failing had badly needed that cash influx, which never came.

The Central America languished at the bottom of the ocean until 1988, when treasure hunter Tommy Gregory Thompson led an expedition to locate the wreck and recover the gold and other artifacts using remotely operated vehicles (ROVs).

The jeans recovered from the wreck were found in the trunk of a San Francisco merchant named John Dement.

But the auction house noted that in most respects—the style, shape, and size of the buttons—the Central America "miner's pants" are nearly identical to another pair of old Levi's.

Other auctioned items from the SS Central America included the wedding trousseau of the Eastons, various other clothing items, passenger receipts, baggage tags, a brass bell, chamber pots, dishware and cutlery, figurines, ship timbers, a beer bottle, and cabin keys.