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Piles of rare vintage clothing crowd the dusty attic of a store in South Austin. On one wall, hundreds of pairs of used Levi's are stacked to the ceiling. The store's owner, a tall man with hair to his shoulders wearing mid-thigh polyester shorts, picks through the pile, pulling out pair after pair of some of the most collectible jeans in the world.
The store is Good Gaud, and its owner, Michael Wasaff, knows what makes a good pair of jeans, or at least what makes them valuable. He is one of many collectors and retailers who deals with denim that can cost more than $1,000.
"I've been collecting my whole life," he said. "I collect clothing and posters. I collect anything. But when I started collecting and selling vintage clothing in 1990, I realized that used Levi's were the bread and butter of the business."
Wasaff said he has between 5000 and 1000 pairs of jeans in his collection, and he can tell the value of each just by looking for small markers.
One of those markers is a capital "E" found on a tab on the back pocket of a select number of Levi's. According to the company's Web site, the big "E" was replaced with a lowercase "e" on Red Tab jeans in 1971.
This small change has made the big "E" a hot commodity. According to Wasaff's price list, one pair of 501s with the capital letter on the tab is worth $150 to $250 wholesale. Retail prices are higher, with one pair selling for $1,366 on Denim Junkie's Web site.
While these prices may be high, Wasaff said he has seen jeans worth more.
"The most expensive pair I have ever seen was a pair of bucklebacks," he said. "They were made in the 1940s, and they were extremely valuable."
The "buckleback" can fetch up to $2,000, according to an antiques and collectibles Web site compiled by the Collecting Network.
This is a small sum compared to the $30,000 one man from Tokyo bid on a pair of 501s in 1995. According to an article written for People magazine, after finding the oldest pair of unworn Levi's in existence, a couple in Denver was receiving offers from $25,000 to $30,000 for the trousers.
Wasaff, who has sold to people from all over the world, said that along with Europeans, the Japanese are the power behind the vintage Levi's market. He said he is always coming across "pickers," those who look very hard to find used denim that they can export at high prices. Pickers are individuals who buy clothing at American prices and sell them to foreign markets where the value is higher.
"They are smart," he said. "They know details that Americans don't know, and they understand the value of the jeans."
Rob Jasinski, owner of Cream Vintage in Austin, said he has learned how to tell the difference between a "picker" and a regular customer.
"Asian pickers will come through two or three times a week," he said. "They come in and search through the jeans and really examine them. They look at clothes in a different way."
While he deals with collectors on a regular basis, Rob said he is strictly a retailer when it comes to selling jeans. Rob receives his jeans through textiles or rag houses that presort clothing. He said he didn't pay attention to things like the big "E" when he first opened.
"If someone had found a pair of redlines or big 'Es' when I first opened, they could have walked out the door with them. I look at all of them now to make sure, but I just didn't care then."
Jasinski said he is not concerned with finding collectible denim and selling it at high prices. He prides himself on selling boot-cut Levi's 517s at low prices. When he was opening his business, he found that they ran for $75 in some areas. A pair of 517s costs $29.95 at Cream Vintage.
"I wanted to sell them at the lowest price I could for what I was making off them," he said.
While the prices are low, Cream's denim selection does not go far beyond Levi's, with only a few pairs of Lee and Wrangler jeans for sale. Jasinski said there is a reason why people love vintage Levi's so much.
"They are so well-made that you can have a pair from the '50s or '60s and still wear them," he said. "You can't do that with many other jeans. You can't do that with a pair of Gap jeans. Levi's are quality."
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