A pair of work trousers recovered from an 1857 shipwreck off the coast of North Carolina and described as the oldest known pair of jeans in the world have sold for $US114,000 ($A168,000).

The white, heavy-duty miner’s trousers with a five-button fly were among 270 Gold Rush-era artefacts that sold for a total of nearly $US1 million in Nevada, according to Holabird Western American Collections.

The trousers pre-date by 16 years the first pair officially manufactured by San Francisco-based Levi Strauss & Co in 1873.

Some say historical evidence suggests there are links to Strauss, who was a wealthy wholesaler of dry goods at the time, and the trousers could be a very early version of what would become the iconic jeans.

But the company’s historian and archive director, Tracey Panek, says any claims about their origin are speculation.

“The pants are not Levi’s nor do I believe they are miner’s work plans,” she wrote in an email to the Associated Press.

The SS Central America sank in a hurricane on September 12, 1857, packed with passengers who began their journey in San Francisco and were on their way to New York via Panama.

And there is no indication older work trousers dating to the Gold Rush-era exist.

“Those miner’s jeans are like the first flag on the moon, a historic moment in history,” said Dwight Manley, managing partner of the California Gold Marketing Group, which owns the artefacts and put them up for auction.

Other auction items that had been entombed for more than a century in the ship’s wreckage 2195 metres below the surface of the Atlantic included the purser’s keys to the treasure room where tonnes of coins and ingots were stored. It sold for $US103,200.

Tens of millions of dollars worth of gold has been sold since shipwreck recovery began in 1988, but this sale marked the first time any artefacts were up for auction.

Another auction is planned in February.

By Scott Sonner in Reno, Nevada, USA