Man Buys Photo For $2 At Garage Sale, Realizes It’s Worth Millions After Spotting Small Detail

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A man in Fresno, California, got a very big surprise after buying a photograph for just two dollars at a garage sale. What seemed like a cheap, old picture turned out to be something worth a fortune because of a tiny but important detail. The photo shows the famous outlaw, Billy the Kid, casually playing a game of croquet.

Experts now believe this old picture could be worth around $5 million, which is truly amazing for something bought for only two dollars.

A well-known company called Kagin’s Inc., which deals with old coins and valuable papers, announced that the photo is real earlier this month. The small picture, only about 4 inches by 5 inches, was taken in the summer of 1878. It might have been taken at a wedding and shows Billy the Kid with other members of his gang, called The Regulators.

David McCarthy, who knows a lot about old money and valuable items at Kagin’s, explained that they spent over a year carefully checking the photo before they were sure it was real. Mr. McCarthy said it wasn’t enough for the person in the picture to just look like Billy the Kid. They needed to be very sure. So, they gathered a group of experts to look closely at every little part of the photo to make sure everything was right.

“When we first saw the photograph, we were understandably skeptical — an original Billy the Kid photo is the Holy Grail of Western Americana,” Mr. McCarthy said. This shows how rare and important a real photo of Billy the Kid is considered. He added, “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.” This means they did a lot of careful work, even visiting the place where the photo might have been taken, to be absolutely sure it’s genuine.

This new photo is now considered to be in the same league as the only other known picture of Billy the Kid. That other picture was smaller, only 2 inches by 3 inches, and was taken in 1880 in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. That picture sold for a huge amount of money, $2.3 million, in 2010, according to Kagin’s.

Billy the Kid, whose real name might have been Henry McCarty or William H. Bonney, is a famous figure in American stories about the Wild West. People remember him as someone who stole things and was quick with a gun. He became even more famous when he escaped from jail after killing two guards. Some stories say he killed 21 people, one for each year of his life, but history books suggest he probably killed around nine people.

The New Mexico Tourism Department says that Billy the Kid was definitely responsible for four deaths, including the two guards he killed when he escaped. He also helped in the deaths of five other people. His time as a wanted man ended when a sheriff named Pat Garrett found him and killed him in Fort Sumner in 1881.

The discovery and confirmation of this new photograph add an interesting and important piece to the story of Billy the Kid, who is one of the most well-known characters from the Wild West. What started as a simple purchase at a garage sale has turned into a very valuable piece of American history.