Levi's Denim Jacket Types: How to Tell a Type 1, Type 2, and Type 3 Apart

Which Levi's jacket type do I have? The ten second check

Levi's never printed Type 1, 2, or 3 anywhere on the jackets. Those are collector names for three distinct designs, and the lot number on the patch (506XX, 507XX, 557XX) is the factory's own name for each. Patches wear off, though, which is why the pocket-and-seam check matters: the cut identifies the jacket even when the patch is long gone. It is the first thing we check ourselves when a jacket comes out of a closet on an Orange County house call.

Type 2 (507XX): 1953 to 1962

The Type 2 replaced the Type 1 in 1953. Two flapped chest pockets, knife pleats running down from each pocket to the waist, buttoned side tabs instead of a back cinch. It was on the back of every fifties icon you can name, which is a real part of why collectors chase it today.

Within the Type 2 run, the patch material narrows the date. The earliest 507XX jackets carry a leather patch; by the mid fifties it changed to the pressed paper style. Telling the two apart on a worn jacket is easier than it sounds. Leather goes dark brown and cracks in a spidery web across the surface, and a torn edge looks fibrous. Paper stays tan, creases rather than cracks, and tears in straight lines that separate into layers at the edge. A readable patch of either kind adds real money, because it removes all doubt about what the jacket is.

Blanket lined Type 2s exist too, with a striped wool blanket sewn inside for winter work. The lining marks nothing about rarity by itself, but lined examples in good shape have their own following.

Type 3 (557XX): 1962 onward, the trucker

In 1962 the pleats disappeared and the modern trucker shape arrived: two pointed pocket flaps and long tapered seams running down the front. The 557XX is the jacket everyone pictures when they hear denim jacket, and the earliest ones, with a capital E on the red tab, are the collectible ones.

Two details are worth a close look on any trucker. First the tab: a capital E (Big E) means made before 1971. Second the size: vintage jackets ran small and mostly survived in small sizes, so a 44 or 46 that fits a modern frame is genuinely hard to find and priced accordingly.

Patches, pins, and why we leave them on

A jacket someone lived in for years often carries the patches they sewed on at the time. The instinct is to pick them off and sell a clean jacket. Do not. Period patches are dated evidence of when the jacket was worn, they are collectible in their own right, and taking them off leaves needle holes and a shadow in the denim that no buyer can unsee. The same goes for the rest of the old clothing in the closet it came out of: let it be looked at before anything is sorted or cleaned.

What about Type 1?

The Type 1 (506XX) is the one pocket, cinch back original, made from 1936 into the early 1950s, and it is the rarest of the three by a wide margin. Wartime examples have their own quirks, because the government's War Production Board stripped details like the cinch to save metal and fabric around 1942. At the extreme top, a museum grade WWII era Type 1 set a Guinness record when it sold for roughly $346,000 in 2026. Most survivors are not that, but any one pocket Levi's jacket deserves a careful look before it goes anywhere near a donation pile. We paid $12,000 in cash for one 1940s Type 1, and the seller was a dealer who knew exactly what he had.

What are Levi's Type 1, 2, and 3 jackets worth?

Honest ranges, as of August 2026. Type 2 507XX jackets typically bring $800 to $1,500, with exceptional dark examples going higher. Big E Type 3 truckers run $150 to $2,000 or more depending on condition, fade, and size. Type 1s start in the low thousands and climb steeply with age and condition. Condition moves every one of these numbers: original hardware, no repairs, and honest fade beat washed, repaired, or altered every time.

Why the trade-in counter is not a valuation

Sellers often check what Levi's itself will give them before calling anyone else, so it is worth knowing what that number is. Under the Levi's SecondHand trade-in program, checked against their own published values in August 2026, a Trucker Jacket made more than twenty years ago is worth $35, and so is any jacket from the premium lines like Levi's Vintage Clothing, regardless of age. Jackets from the last ten years bring $5 to $20. All of it is paid as a gift card for Levi's merchandise rather than cash, and a jacket they cannot resell earns nothing at all.

That program is a perfectly reasonable way to clear a closet of ordinary modern denim. It is simply not a reading of what a jacket is. The same $35 goes to a 1950s Type 2 and to a pair of jeans from 2004, because the counter is not looking at the patch, the pleats, or the tab. A Type 2 that trades in for a $35 gift card is a jacket that typically sells into the collector market for $800 to $1,500. Before any jacket goes to any counter, ours included, find out which of the three types you are holding.

Three misreadings we see on jacket types

The first is treating the lot number as proof of age. Levi's Vintage Clothing reproduces the 506XX and 507XX faithfully, period patch and lot number included, so a patch reading 507XX does not by itself make a jacket old. Modern production carries a fabric content and care tag sewn into a side seam, which the originals do not have, and LVC marks its own jackets on an inner tag. Check inside the jacket before you believe the patch.

The second is assuming a 70505 is not vintage. The Type 3 was simply renumbered from 557XX to 70505, so a 70505 is the same jacket under a later lot number, not a fake and not a different design. It just means you are looking at a later trucker, and its value comes from the tab, the fade, and the size rather than from the number on the patch.

The third is reading a cinch back as nineteenth century. The back cinch is genuinely a Type 1 marker, but the War Production Board had it stripped from production around 1942 to save metal, so a buckle back means pre-war, not necessarily pre-1900. That is still an uncommon and valuable jacket. It is just a 1930s or early 1940s one rather than the museum piece a seller sometimes hopes for, and we would rather say that plainly than let anyone plan around the wrong number.

If the jacket is not in California

Jacket identification questions come from everywhere, and the type checks on this page work the same in Ohio as they do in Orange County. So does selling to us. For sellers outside Southern California we buy remotely: photos or a video call first, the jacket looked at together, a price agreed on the call, payment sent by PayPal before anything is packed, and shipping paid by us. Nobody has to drive anywhere or trust a mail-in envelope with a jacket worth four figures.

• Do not wash it. Collectors pay for the dirt and the fade exactly as they are.
• Do not repair it. A period hole is worth more than a modern patch.
• Do not cut the patch off or remove the tab, ever.
• Photograph the patch, the tab, the buttons, and the seams. That is everything a buyer needs.