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# The Exploring Abandoned Mines channel found eight pairs of 1880s jeans in mines
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/nashel-nerealno-krutoe-shou-issledovateli-zabroshennykh-shakht-gruppa-entuziastov-razezzhaet-po-severnoi-amerike-v-poiskakh-starinnykh-shakht-kotorye-prigovoreny-k-unichtozheniiu-sravni/
- Published: 2020-11-25T14:01:42.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-02T19:00:21.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Archaeology, Museums, Observations, Pop Culture

Found an absolutely brilliant show, [Abandoned Mine Explorers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI6ApUvuToM&ref=theparnassian.com): a group of enthusiasts roams North America in search of old mines condemned to destruction, levelling and oblivion. The explorers descend to the very bottom of forgotten tunnels and shafts and hunt for objects left behind by miners a hundred years ago.

In this episode, for instance, the searchers dug out 8 pairs of jeans from the 1880s.

You may remember that, some ten years ago, a single pair of Levi's from 1879 went under the hammer at auction for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Antique jeans can indeed fetch such sums, all the more so in the state of preservation that the dry old mines afford. By Levi's own reckoning, there are now no more than a hundred complete pairs of nineteenth-century jeans from their factories left in the world, and collectors are prepared to pay handsomely for them, to say nothing of the manufacturer itself, which sometimes joins the bidding to acquire this or that model for its own museum, and which, incidentally, is glad to advise the owners of denim rarities on its website.

Why is it jeans in particular that turn up in American mines? And does this count as clothing taken from a corpse? The point is that jeans were a change of work clothes, so on coming up to the surface miners often left a bundle of their things below, so as not to haul extra weight and needless dirt upward, and at some point the workmen's 'leavings' were left ownerless and mouldered away along with the rest of the contents of the mine.

Three of the pairs of 120-year-old trousers shown in the programme were made by Levi Strauss, the rest by Stonghold, Triumph and Pacifico. Do take a look at them: the design is hardly different from the modern one, truly an invention for the ages. Some of them may be sold, while others will go to the museum of the YouTube channel Exploring Abandoned Mines, open to visitors free of charge in the town of Grand Forks in British Columbia, Canada.