Editorials

Billy the Croquet Kid?Not much of an outlaw

THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Updated October 15, 2015 6:13 PM

Western Americana and Rare Coin experts, Kaginâs, Inc., announced that the firm has authenticated and will be the exclusive seller of a newly discovered photograph featuring several of the Lincoln County Regulators, including legendary gunman, Billy the Kid. The photograph was purchased for $2 as a part of a miscellaneous lot at a Fresno junk shop in 2010, and will be the subject of a two-hour documentary airing Sunday at 8 p.m. Central on National Geographic Channel. Kaginâ™s

A $2 California junk-store photo of New Mexico men playing croquet has turned out to be a long-lost, $5 million tintype of Old West outlaw Billy the Kid.

It’s remarkable that anyone found it, but also that researchers were able to identify the photo. It’s only the second ever known of the Kid, believed to have been shot dead at 21 in New Mexico in 1881.

The Clovis, Calif., man who bought it thought he recognized faces in the 4-by-5-inch tintype. Experts studied the landmarks and even the croquet equipment and decided it was probably taken at a wedding in 1878, a month before the so-called Lincoln County War.

The photo’s discovery gives hope to historians who want to track down a more accurate version of the Kid’s story and life in New Mexico. (In Texas, a museum in Hico is devoted to a local resident’s unlikely 1950 claim that he was the real Kid.)

But what is most amazing is that an 18-year-old gunfighter played croquet.

This story was originally published October 15, 2015 at 5:56 PM with the headline "Billy the Croquet Kid?Not much of an outlaw."

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