A photo that allegedly shows notorious Wild West outlaw Billy The Kid has been authenticated and could be worth up to $5 million. If it really is Billy The Kid, it would only be the second known photograph of the gunman.
Kagin’s Inc. claims that it has authenticated the photo, just ahead of National Geographic Channel’s Billy The Kid: New Evidence special, which airs on Sunday. The photo was purchased by a collector at a Fresno junk shop five years ago for just $2.
The photo shows several members of Billy and his gang, but from a distance. You would need a magnifying glass just to see the face of the man Kagin’s says is Billy. The gunman is standing in front of a cabin, leaning against a croquet mallet and wearing a top hat. It appears to have been taken in summer 1878, just a month after the Lincoln County War.
“When we first saw the photograph, we were understandably skeptical – an original Billy the Kid photo is the Holy Grail of Western Americana,” Kagin’s senior numismatist, David McCarthy, said in a statement. “We had to be certain that we could answer and verify where, when, how and why this photograph was taken. Simple resemblance is not enough in a case like this – a team of experts had to be assembled to address each and every detail in the photo to insure that nothing was out of place. After more than a year of methodical study including my own inspection of the site, there is now overwhelming evidence of the image’s authenticity.”
According to CBS News, experts think that the photo could be worth up to $5 million. That’s double the price of the only other known photo of Billy, which went for $2.3 million in 2010.
However, some in New Mexico are skeptical about the photo. Daniel Kosharek, photo curator at the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, told the Santa Fe New Mexican that the scene doesn’t even look like any location in Lincoln or New Mexico.
“Add to that, the people in the photograph are very small and difficult to see [and] it is just plain problematic on a lot of fronts. How this particular one has gained so much traction is beyond me,” Kosharek explained.
According to legends, Billy killed 21 people - one for each year of his life, although histories think the number is much lower. He was killed by Pat Garrett in July 1881.