Picture of Billy the Kid sold for a lot of money

[Diapositivo]

http://www.repubblica.it/persone/201...1/?ref=HRESS-1

This small picture was apparently sold for 1 million 600 thousands Euro. It's a small contact print, it sold for more gold than it weights really.

[benjiboy]

I think this Ferrotype is the only existing photograph of him and is unique, P.S. The rifle he is leaning on isn't a Winchester, it's a Henry.

[Jeff Kubach]

That is amazing!

Jeff

[benjiboy]

I'm not a bleeding heart liberal, but I can't help thinking that there's something deeply immoral about someone spending this amount of money on a scrap of paper that will probably languish in a bank vault for the rest of it's existence when two thirds of the Worlds population go to bed hungry every night, I know it's the guys money and he can do what he likes with it, but I wonder how he sleeps at night.

[Steve Smith]

but I wonder how he sleeps at night.

Probably very well on a very comfortable, expensive bed!


Steve.

[tomalophicon]

The same reason a lot of us sleep easily at night after spending lots of money on computers, film, paper, cars, tellies, phones, internet connections, clothes, things with lots of fancy packaging etc... We don't think about it!

Great photograph by the way.

[edp]

It's a small contact print

a scrap of paper

It's a tintype. But yes, an obscenely expensive one.

This amused me:

The tintype format was an early type of photography which used metal plates to create reverse images, and the photograph led to the mistaken belief that the outlaw was left handed. This is why a 1958 film about his life, starring Paul Newman, was entitled The Left Handed Gun

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesi...hotograph-sold

[Nicholas Lindan]

deeply immoral about someone spending this amount of money

Yes, but this someone doesn't have the money any more. It has been removed from his possession and he has been given a scrap of tin in recompense.

The more money the rich spend the poorer they get.

"Feed the birds and what have you got? Fat birds."

[silent-tortoise]

Yes, but this someone doesn't have the money any more. It has been removed from his possession and he has been given a scrap of tin in recompense.

The more money the rich spend the poorer they get.

"Feed the birds and what have you got? Fat birds."

Wrong. The more the Rich spend, the more they receive. Feed the birds and what do you get? Satisfied, happy birds.

[benjiboy]

Lew Wallace the governor of New Mexico and a former Civil War Union general who pardoned Billy on a murder charge, later went on to write Ben-Hur .