Rare Photo of Billy the Kid Found In Fresno Thrift Shop! Worth 5mil

$2 Photo Found At Junk Store Has Billy The Kid, Could Be Worth $5M

- Brakkton Booker, NPR.org

It's not every day you can plop down two bucks and walk away with some "junk" that is worth a fortune. But that's what happened when a collector purchased an old-timey photo from a Fresno, Calif., antiques shop.

It turns out, the infamous outlaw Billy the Kid is in the photo, apparently taking part in a leisurely game of croquet.

The image could be worth up to $5 million.

Kagin's Inc., a numismatics firm, announced it had authenticated the photo earlier this month. The 4-inch-by-5-inch tintype shows Billy the Kid in the summer of 1878. It may have been taken at a wedding, and he is alongside several members of his gang, The Regulators, according to the firm.

The only other known photo of the outlaw was taken in 1880 in Fort Sumner, N.M. That photo, a 2-inch-by-3-inch tintype, pulled in $2.3 million in 2010, according to Kagin's.

Billy the Kid, whose real name may have been Henry McCarty (he also used the alias William H. Bonney), has remained part of American frontier folklore for generations. He was a famous thief and gunfighter who was captured and sentenced to death but escaped prison after killing two guards.

Legend has it that he killed 21 men, one for each year of his life. However, according to the New Mexico Tourism Department, the number was actually nine: four that he was solely responsible for, including the two guards, and five he helped dispatch.

Billy the Kid was eventually tracked down and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett at Fort Sumner in 1881.