The world's oldest known jeans have sold for $114,000

The work pants were discovered in a sunken trunk in a shipwreck in 1857 near the coast of North Carolina.

The jeans feature a five-button fly and are thought to have belonged to a miner.

The garment were among 270 items of Gold Rush-era memorabilia that sold for almost a total of $1 million at auction, according to Holabird Western Americana Collections.

The auction was held in Reno, Nevada, and online.

Auction officials say that the five-button fly indicates that the jeans could be an early manufacture of work pants sold by Levi Strauss - who made the first pair of blue jeans in San Francisco in 1873.

Dwight Manley, the managing partner of artefact owners the California Gold Marketing Group, said: "Those miner's jeans are like the first flag on the moon, a historic moment in history.

"There are no earlier five-button fly jeans in existence."

For feedback: contact the Editorial Department at onlinefeedback@gleanerjm.com.