A buyer with a penchant for vintage denim has plunked down nearly $100,000 for a pair of truly vintage jeans that come from the American Old West.

The 125-year-old Levi Strauss & Co. blue jeans, which failed to sell at auction in 2016, now have a new owner somewhere in Southeast Asia.

�It�s somebody who loves old Levis,� said Daniel Buck Soules from Daniel Buck Auctions, who worked for 11 years on public television�s �Antiques Roadshow.�

The price puts it near record territory for old Levis. But the private sale agreement prevents Soules from disclosing the exact price or the buyer�s location, he said. The buyer sent a representative to Maine to inspect the jeans before buying them on May 15, he said.

There�s no mystery behind the jeans.

They were purchased in 1893 by Solomon Warner, a storekeeper in the Arizona Territory. Warner was a colorful character who established one of the first stores selling American dry goods in Tucson and survived being shot by Apache Indians in 1870.

The denim was produced at a mill in New Hampshire, and the jeans were manufactured by Levi�s in San Francisco. Unlike modern Levis, the jeans in those days had only a single back pocket. There were no belt loops because men used suspenders back then.

The denim befits a larger-than-life character. The cotton jeans, with button fly, had a size 44 waist and 36-inch inseam, suggesting Warner was not a small man.

They�d been stored for decades in a trunk and were in pristine condition because Warner wore them only a few times before falling ill, Soules said.

Soules put the jeans up for auction in 2016, but a computer glitch botched the online bidding. Then the owner decided to go the private-sale route, he said.

There�s a market for rare jeans.

A pair of 501 jeans manufactured in the 1880s sold for $60,000 to a Japanese collector, Soules said, and another pair, from 1888, sold for six figures.

(AP)