Jeans for $60.000
A pair of Levis 501s jeans from 1890 was sold for $60,000 on ebay.
The list of the most expensive items which ever were sold includes the record-setting car, baseball card, toy, and even tooth.
“Levi Strauss is popularly credited with inventing jeans, but jeans and denim originate much earlier, in Europe. The term “jeans” may well be derived from “Genoese”, a blue fustian fabric worn by Italian sailors. It was imported into Britain during the 16th century, and fustian is referred to in English literature by Thomas Hardy (in The Mayor of Casterbridge) and Charles Dickens (in The Pickwick Papers).
Denim may be an English abbreviation of Serge de Nîmes, a French twill weave cloth made from a mixture of wool and silk, and by the 19th century in England a denim fabric was being manufactured with a white warp and a navy weft. At around the same time, American weavers were making hard wearing denim-type fabric to satisfy a home market, replacing the original yarns with locally produced cotton.
A native German, Levi Strauss was already a successful trader when in 1873 he and a tailor named Jacob Davis patented a method by which the weak points of work pants – such as pocket corners and the base of the fly – could be reinforced by metal rivets. Soon, Levi Strauss & Co. was selling the innovative new pants to all types of working men, assigning to the product the number 501. The patent went into the public domain in about 1891 and other garment manufacturers began to imitate the original riveted clothing.”
read more on http://www.patricktaylor.com/levi-501
Bid of $1.75 on eBay gets Saginaw home
According to the Saginaw News, a Chicago woman, Joanne Smith, 30, has won eBay auction for an abandoned home in Saginaw With a winning bid of just $1.75. She was the top bidder for the home during an auction on eBay. Her bid was one of eight for the home, The Saginaw News reported.
“I am going to try and sell it,” she told the newspaper. “I don’t have any plans to move to Saginaw.”
Smith said she hasn’t seen the property or visited Saginaw, which has been hard-hit by economic troubles in recent years.
There’s a notice on the door of the home saying a foreclosure hearing is pending, the newspaper said. She must pay about $850 in back taxes and yard cleanup costs.