$10 eBay Photo Turns Out to be Picture of Jesse James Worth $2,000,000+
How’s this for a lucky photo find: a 19th-century tintype photo purchased from eBay for just $10 has been identified as an extremely rare portrait of the infamous outlaw Jesse James… worth an estimated $2 million+.
Having been obsessed with American outlaws for years, Whiting purchased the tintype for its Buy It Now price of $10 in July 2017.
“I noticed the picture for sale — it was $10. It was a bit blurry on the site but when I got it, it was a lot clearer,” Whiting tells SWNS. “I thought to myself: ‘Gee wizz, this could be a real photo!’ I’ve been obsessed with American outlaws for years and read lots of books and study their faces.”
The 45-year-old then took the photo to forensic experts in the United States, including California-based 19th-century photo expert Will Dunniway, who concluded that the photo is a genuine photo of Jesse James at around age 14.
“It was an easy match since it was compared to a longtime known image of the young Jesse James at 14,” Dunniway tells Fox News. “Justin’s image, however, was the same pose taken the same day by the same photographer […] [It’s a] one-of-a-kind original that most likely was handled by the teenaged Jesse James himself.”
Whiting has been told that the photo could fetch at least $2 million.
Born in 1847, Jesse James was a famous American outlaw who was known for violent robberies of banks, trains, and stagecoaches across the Midwest. Since his death at the hands of a new recruit to his gang in 1882 at age 34, James has gone down in history as one of the legendary outlaws of the Wild West.
Here are some known photos of James at different points in his life:
There have been other famous finds of American outlaw photos in recent years. Perhaps most notably, a $2 junk shop photo turned out to be a $5 million picture of Billy the Kid in 2015.
