Can’t afford to invest in a Birkin? Check your jeans

If you’re looking for a piece of fashion to invest in, most people would point you towards a luxury handbag, or perhaps a designer piece of clothing. The iconic Hermès Birkin bag is renowned for fetching tens of thousands at auction, and is a pretty safe bet when it comes to holding its value. But if you only have a couple of hundred bucks to spare, your options are a little more limited. There is, however, one classic piece that bucks this trend.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the iconic Levi’s 501 jeans. Created in 1873 as workwear for American miners and farmers, the jeans have gone from a blue-collar staple to a veritable status item. “I refer to the 501 as the grassroots garment, because it starts here and kind of works its way up,” says Tracy Patek, Historian at Levi Strauss & Co, referring to its humble origins.

Digging through my wardrobe, most items would be lucky to fetch 50 per cent of what I purchased them for. Save for my beloved pair of French-made Levi 501s from the 1990s, bought for about $80 in 2013. A quick search on a second-hand resale site reveals that 501s of similar vintage can now sell for up to $300.

Leroi Waddington is the director of Route 66, a vintage store in Enmore, Sydney. His parents opened the store in Darlinghurst in the 1980s, when he says 501s would have sold for about $25 to $30 (around $70 in 2023). While he says prices vary widely depending on when they were made, a pair from the 1970s to early 2000s will go for about $125 in his store. 501s that predate the 1970s can sell for beyond $370.

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Eileen Carney, founder and owner of American Rag, a vintage store in Melbourne’s CBD, has been selling Levi’s 501s for over three decades. “They’re a collector’s item,” she says. Most 501s in her store start at around $120, but she says collector’s items don’t even make it to the shop floor and are listed online.

Carney suggests that prices for vintage 501s will continue to rise. “There’s no price resistance,” she says. “There is only a finite amount made in the USA or in periods of times gone past, they weren’t mass-produced.”

While there’s a plethora of clues that can date a pair of 501s, from the fabric used for the pockets to selvedge denim on the seams, Carney says that older jeans will carry an uppercase “E” on the back tab and will be made in the USA.