
I mine for 100-year-old jeans - edward
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/sep/25/experience-i-mine-for-denim
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personlurking
When I read anything like this, I remember this article:

How Japan Copied American Culture and Made it Better

"If you’re looking for some of America’s best bourbon, denim and burgers, go
to Japan, where designers are re-engineering our culture in loving detail"

[http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/how-japan-copied-
americ...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/how-japan-copied-american-
culture-and-made-it-better-180950189)

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ZeroGravitas
Why do you need to be "authorised" to sell really old jeans back to Levi's for
their archive?

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giarc
I followed some links to other sites and one talked about all the counterfeits
etc. I imagine it is prevent a glutton of jeans coming to them by shady
characters. By limiting the certain people they know that anyone that comes to
them is bringing a legitimate pair.

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zakalwe2000
very gibsonian profession

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hluska
I haven't read Pattern Recognition in years. Cayce Pollard would dig in an old
mine for 135 year old pairs of jeans, wouldn't she??

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aaronbrethorst
Maybe more of a Hollis Henry-type obsession:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_History)

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hluska
I haven't read Zero History yet, but I've added it to my list. Thanks for the
tip - I'm embarrassed to say this, but I forgot about that book!! :)

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atomical
Metal detecting is a really great hobby if digging for dirty jeans doesn't
sound like much fun.

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mhb
Given the crap they make today, it's no wonder people will pay more for older
stuff.

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dclowd9901
1000x better? This is buying an interesting life and interesting story from
people who have neither but lots of money.

We should be ashamed we live in a world where someone will pay as much for a
pair of old jeans as an average salary.

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noonespecial
Why? They didn't consume a bunch of resources or anything. They just
relinquished their claim on said lots of resources to be the only guy in the
world who gets to have a certain bit of dirty old fabric.

It sounds like a net win for everyone. Rich guy provides (what ostensibly is)
100's of $k worth of value to society and all he asks in return is dirty old
jeans?! Fantastic.

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semi-extrinsic
It's even a win for greenhouse gas emissions. To an order of magnitude, each
dollar you spend buying consumer products causes 1 kg of CO2 emissions. This
obviously causes a lot less (as does most art).

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SixSigma
Except now that $100k is returned to the economy for spending

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greggyb
Returned from where?

It is an economic fallacy that saved/invested money provides no value to
society.

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SixSigma
Returned from illiquid storage

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greggyb
Unless that storage is some form of physical cash horde, it's never been
"removed" from the economy in the first place so a "return" is a meaningless
concept.

