A $2 photo from a California junk shop is the ‘holy grail of Western Americana’

[bloat]

You must have pretty specialised knowledge to look at that photo in the junk shop and say to yourself, "You know, that might be Billy the Kid. I should get this appraised."

[dogma1138]

Allot of people hunt for "treasures" in thrift shops, yard sales, and even auctions and then get them evaluated by more knowledgeable experts.

When you buy enough "junk" that just looks old and or unique you'll eventually hit jackpot, I'm really not sure that the guy who bought the picture knew exactly it's value or it's historical significance, he just might had enough experience to estimate that it's more likely than not worth more than 2$ and got really really lucky.

An original old-western picture could probably get more than 2$ on Ebay and the likes as just decorative art so even without it's historical significance it could've been purchased as an "investment".

[rokhayakebe]

Now imagine, sometime, somewhere, someone got a written manuscript from Plato, or the Buddha, or another figure and just used it to make fire.

[mcguire]

Depends. You'd have to look closely at the photo to see him, but the stance and appearance are very close to the other, well-known photograph:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Billy_th...

I'm not anything like an expert, but looking at the enlarged portion, he was the one who came to mind.

[Overtonwindow]

I thought the same thing I mean... IS that really him? It looks - pardon the phrase - photoshopped. Like someone pasted a smudged face on to another body. The figure on the right is so clear, and yet the one on the left looks like a deformity. I would love to read more about the analysis done to verify this.

[thornofmight]

Yeah that's the one thing I was hoping the article would explain.

[dalke]

Short version: the photograph is only the second verified image of Billy the Kid. Verification of it required an in-depth analysis, including finding where the picture was taken.

[pavel_lishin]

I wish the article had gone into more detail about what the verification process is like.

[pgrote]

Of all the photos being taken right now, it's odd to think there probably won't be discoveries of old photos in junk shops in 2150.

[dogma1138]

That is actually a serious issue that many scientists including historians, anthropologists and archaeologists are actually trying to find ways around.

Digital storage is far more fragile than many physical storage mediums, digital data in many cases might also be indistinguishable from random data in such cases where it have been heavily encoded, encrypted, or the mata-data was lost.

Time capsules are now becoming more and more important (including us sending one to Mars) because if we blow ourselves up or encounter a calamity that will erase much of modern technology we will lose more data in that instant than all the data lost to history before that.

Most modern storage media will not last a century even under good conditions, yet alone under conditions that we've found many historical manuscripts and objects of significance so it's quite important for us to develop a high-density, long term media which can store current information in ways that will be fairly simple to access, micro-film was a good candidate at one time but the information density was too small, so allot of people are working on more high density storage media including crystals, and even encoding allot of information into DNA, if you can turn an entire forest into a time capsule you might be able to preserve knowledge for a very very long time.

[fn42]

"Hard drive from junk shop found to be from an old facebook server"

I do wonder how digital archiving will work in the future. Hopefully something better than "the archive.org volunteers decided to archive it"

[TeMPOraL]

The realization of just how fragile the Internet is scares me. It's even more ephemeral than personal digital storage. Keep in mind, your typical hard drive in a data centre wears down after 3 to 5 years, maybe less, and has to be replaced. Everything we store on-line exists only because of steady and flowing manufacturing and supply of new hard drives.

[NullCharacter]

If you had bought this picture for $2 later to find out it's worth $5,000,000, would you feel an obligation to share some of the proceeds with the shop from which it was purchased?

[mikestew]

If I bought a picture for $5,000,000 and later find out it's worth $2, do I get my money back? No, didn't think so.

Lottery tickets are not a parallel, given that it's luck of the draw that determines the value of the ticket. At the time of purchase, the ticket is worth exactly the price of the paper it's printed on.

Here's a better, less extreme but real example. I just purchased a mandolin from a seller of vintage guitars. Paid $750, and were I to be patient I could probably get $1200 out of it. I have no plans to sell it, as I bought it to play, but let's supposed six months down the road I do sell it. Do I send a spiff back to Jimmy's Vintage Guitars? Nope. Jimmy admittedly doesn't know jack about mandolins. Jimmy didn't even get the model right, even though sixty seconds on Google would tell you the one easily-seen distinguishing feature that says it's a Gibson A-50 and not an A-40. I don't feel bad for Jimmy, because if he's going to take stuff to sell, he should know what he's selling because it's his business. Jimmy better have a big pile of "Vintage Instruments Value" books on the shelf, and know how to use the internet. I also assume that whether he obtained by trade or cash, he felt he got an acceptable deal when he took the instrument. So even though I got a bargain, Jimmy came out okay, too.

Now, I'm not a total bastard. Were I to find, say, a 1923 Gibson F5 at a yard sale for $50, I'd give the person $500. Two reasons for that: such an instrument is worth several thousand dollars even in rough shape, and I don't expect a person selling Grandpa's mandolin at a yard sale to have any idea of its value. They're not in the vintage instrument business, they shouldn't be punished (too much) for not knowing what they're selling. They get 10x what they were asking, and I still get a steal, everyone goes home very happy.

In the end, someone got lucky and it wasn't the person that sold the picture. I might very well kick back a little to the original seller, but I most certainly wouldn't feel obligated to do so.

[dogma1138]

If you buy a winning lottery ticket would you give part of your winnings to the store you bought it from?

[swang]

Whenever something like this comes up (item bought at flea market and the like sells for millions), this question or similar gets asked. But why is that? The purchaser bought the photo at $2, which is what the store priced it at or was willing to part with the item. That's the only obligation the purchaser had. Pay the store money.

[onedev]

Absolutely not. It doesn't make any sense. They sold me an item for $2. The item's new value is now many times that due to findings of my own accord.

[drak0n1c]

If I had a good relationship with the store, or if it's a well-kept store that's a substantial boon to the community, sure. But otherwise it's like trading stocks - the seller was betting that the value is low and will continue to be low. Would you give money to the trader who sold you a stock that later dramatically rose in value?

[shampine]

Probably not no, they probably picked it up in some bulk purchase. If it came from a garage sale or the like, then maybe? But a junk shop deals in this world, that this, that they should be aware could have something amongst all their stuff that is actually worth a fortune.

[briandear]

No. That junk shop had every opportunity to evaluate their stock prior to sale. Not my problem.

[jonknee]

No, but I'd probably go back to the shop and see if I missed anything else!

[rbcgerard]

personally, i think it would depend on how much of an information advantage i had i.e.

1. oh that picture looks nice, i'll buy it, and then have it appraised thinking it might be worth a couple hundred bucks

2. Is that billy the kid? this could be really valuable, let me see if i can get it for a song

[mmmBacon]

The caption says the image was taken during the summer of 1878 but there are no leaves on the trees. So either the trees around their hide out were all dead or it wasn't summer.

[echion]

It can be hot and dry in summer in New Mexico. Not great for leaves.

"The loss of numerous leaves from trees is not uncommon in New Mexico in June." -- http://aces.nmsu.edu/ces/yard/1997/063097.html

[brudgers]

Because the photo is purported to be from after the "end" of the Lincoln County War, my understanding is that Billy the Kid and the other Regulators were not hiding out when it was taken.

[jacquesm]

http://www.aboutbillythekid.com/

[morgante]

TIL that "senior numismatist" is a job title.

It's consistently amazing how incredibly specialized our modern economy is.

[crystalmeph]

Even though it's not technically a job title, I always start daydreaming whenever a new leap second announcement comes out: https://hpiers.obspm.fr/eoppc/bul/bulc/bulletinc.49. It's always addressed to "authorities responsible for the measurement and distribution of time." If I had that kind of job responsibility, I'd always be threatening to cut people's time rations.

[peter303]

William Koch (the "poor" brother) is a western nut and bought the other photo. With his wealth he probably bid a high price. (His brothers expelled him from the family business with smaller share of stock.)

[kelvin0]

I wonder which Instagram filter he used, looks really old...

[mjmsmith]

The ten-year-old in me was delighted to learn that there is actually something called the Butte Nugget.

[AlexEatsKittens]

Is reddit starting to migrate to HN or something? I've been seeing a lot of these types of comments recently.

[leaveyou]

"It has been independently appraised at $5 million..". Ba ha ha ha, maybe it's raining money in California but in my part of the world there is a saying: "It's not a fool the one who asks, it's a fool the one who offers.. [an exorbitant price for something]".