Billy the Kid image sells for $2.3m in Denver
Only surviving authenticated portrait of 19th- century Wild West outlaw sold at auction.
Organisers said they had expected the tintype could fetch between $300,000 and $400,000 [Reuters] |
The only surviving authenticated portrait of Billy the Kid, the 19th-century Wild West outlaw, has sold for $2.3m.
The tintype, an early form of photography using metal plates, was put up for auction at Denver on Saturday and went to private collector William Koch.
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Auction spokeswoman Melissa McCracken said the image was the most expensive piece ever sold at the event.
Organisers had expected it could fetch between $300,000 and $400,000, the AP news agency reported.
“There’s only one photo of Billy the Kid, and I think that’s why it captivates people’s imagination,” McCracken said before Saturday’s auction.
“It’s recognisable around the world as a classic image of the Old West.”
Believed to have been taken in 1879 or 1880, the tintype shows the notorious outlaw dressed in a sombrero hat and layers of clothes topped with a bulky sweater.
His right hand rests on a Winchester carbine while a Colt revolver is holstered on his left side.
Billy the Kid gave the image to a friend, Dan Dedrick, and the tintype has been owned by his descendants ever since.
It has only ever been publicly displayed once, during the 1980s at a museum in Lincoln County, New Mexico, where Billy the Kid became a legendary gunman in the 1870s.
Only 21 years old at the time of his death, Billy the Kid had grown into a legend because the governor of New Mexico had put a price on his head for killing up to 21 people.
He was shot dead in 1881 and buried in Fort Sumner, New Mexico.