A “one-of-a-kind” tintype photo of notorious Old West outlaw Billy the Kid playing cards with his gang is going under the hammer with a reported $1 million price tag.
The photo from 1877 — only the second confirmed image of the wanted gunslinger, who was also known as William H. Bonney — shows the 18-year-old seated with Richard Brewer, Fred Waite and Henry Brown.
Wearing a white shirt, dark waistcoat and top hat, Billy is looking down at his cards with a quarter-full bottle of booze sitting atop the small table in front of him.
At the time, Billy was wanted for murdering a blacksmith in Arizona, according to the Daily Mail.
He is believed to have killed seven other men during the Lincoln County War in 1878, including Lincoln County Sheriff William Brady. He was finally caught by Sheriff Pat Garrett, who shot him in the dark.
The photo, which has been kept in the same family for over a century, was originally handed over to the seller’s grandfather by the widow of David Anderson, aka Billy Wilson, who befriended Billy during the war.
After receiving a pardon from President Grover Cleveland in 1896, he went on to serve as sheriff of Terrell County and also worked a US customs inspector.
In a letter detailing the photograph’s journey into his family, vendor Tomas Anderson II said: “When my grandfather and family went to pay their respects to the widow of David Anderson at his 1918 funeral, she gifted him, with among other items, a small leather family photograph album.
“She explained to my grandfather’s family about the history of the photograph and how Billy had gifted the photo to her husband,” he wrote.
In an addendum, Anderson said the photo remained in his family “through three generations continuously until 2010. At that time, I was unfortunately in need of immediate funds for a family crisis, and had no other alternative but to sell the photo.”
He added that he was “very despondent for several years over the loss of the photo, until 2018, when this gentleman I spoke of, suddenly listed the photo on ebay for sale. I then proceeded to buy it back from him at that time, and it has remained in it’s original condition in my family’s possession up to the present day.”
The photo has been verified by the George Eastman Museum in Texas, where historian Mark Osterman said the image was consistent with being a collodion tintype photo produced between 1870 and 1890.
Sofe Design Auctions of Richardson, Texas, will hold the auction on Friday morning.