Randy Guijarro paid $2 for three old photographs at a Fresno-area antique shop in 2010, never expecting one of them to draw scrutiny from Old West historians. The tiny 4-by-5-inch tintype eventually drew a $5 million appraisal and insurance valuation after researchers at a rare coins and Western Americana firm claimed it showed the outlaw Billy the Kid. Not everyone agrees.
Guijarro suspected right away that one of the men in his bargain-bin find might be the famous gunslinger, according to ABC News. He eventually brought the image to Kagin's, a firm that specializes in Western Americana and rare coins, and its experts spent more than a year studying the photograph, as the Los Angeles Times reported, trying to pin down where and when it was taken and who appeared in it. Their conclusion: the tintype depicted Henry McCarty, better known as William H. Bonney or Billy the Kid, alongside members of the Lincoln County Regulators, playing croquet in the summer of 1878. The identification initially drew skepticism.
A Backyard Game That Became a Legal and Historical Puzzle
Kagin's researchers said they traced the scene to New Mexico and located the photographed schoolhouse, or its foundations, in Chaves County — about a mile up the road from the former home of John Tunstall, Billy the Kid's mentor. Researchers placed the building near Tunstall's old property. Supporting the croquet detail, Tunstall himself had written about playing the lawn game, a point researchers used to bolster the scene's plausibility.
The image itself shows a crowd: five men, six women and seven children, all unidentified by any markings on the photo, according to the Santa Fe New Mexican. Kagin's identified one of the young men as Billy the Kid. The firm then insured and appraised the photograph for $5 million, Artnet News reported, though that figure reflected an appraisal rather than a completed sale.
Initial Skepticism About the Identification
Some experts initially questioned the identification before Kagin's completed its study.
Its backstory received a burst of national publicity in October 2015, ahead of the scheduled broadcast of National Geographic's Billy the Kid: New Evidence.
How It Compares to the One Photo Experts Do Trust
The croquet tintype's disputed identification contrasts with another known Billy the Kid tintype, believed to date to 1880. That image sold at auction for $2.3 million, with Artnet News dating the sale to 2011 at a Denver auction, while ABC News reported the same $2.3 million purchase, by collector William Koch, as having occurred in 2010. Either way, that sale was a confirmed transaction; the croquet photograph, by contrast, received a $5 million valuation.
Guijarro predicted that more purported Billy the Kid photographs would surface. As Cleveland.com recounted Guijarro's story, his $2 purchase included the photo Kagin's later identified as Billy the Kid.
