It's hard to picture a more ringing endorsement of an article of clothing than, "Our product can stay underground for 140 years and still be wearable!"

On Oct. 1, in a remote RV park in northern New Mexico, a pair of excavated Levi's jeans from the 1880s sold at auction for $76,000. The buyer? A 23-year-old from San Diego.

"I'm still kind of bewildered, just surprised in myself for even purchasing them," said Kyle Haupert, who walked away with the jeans, during an interview a few days after the auction closed. ...

The high-value Levi's are an extraordinarily rare pair of jeans from an era before planes, traffic lights and radios. They were found several years ago by Michael Harris, a self-described denim archaeologist, in an abandoned mineshaft in the American West.

There's such a thing as a "denim archaeologist," eh? Who knew?

This particular pair of jeans, however, carried with it a little factoid that Levi's probably would have preferred stay buried in that mineshaft:

On the interior, the pants bear the phrase "The only kind made by white labor" printed on a pocket. According to a Levi's spokesperson, the company used the slogan following 1882's Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred Chinese laborers from entering the U.S. during a time of rampant anti-Chinese discrimination.

Levi's subsequently adopted its own anti-Chinese labor policy, reflected in the "made by white labor" tagline on its products and in advertisements. In the 1890s, Levi's scrapped its policy and dropped the slogan, the spokesman said.

Well, at least they're owning up to it, though you can imagine that Levi's might at this very moment be going around to every mineshaft in the country in order to make sure no more of these embarrassing jeans are discovered.