Man Buys $2 Photograph Worth $5 Million From California Thrift Shop

You might have heard the saying "a picture is worth a thousand words," but what about $5 million? Randy Guijarro walked into a secondhand store in Fresno with no idea that he would be walking out a potential millionaire. According to The Sun, Guijarro purchased three old photographs from the store and one just happened to be worth $5 million.

“I really just liked the looks of it. It’s 4 x 5 inches, it’s a tintype, and it’s a country scene. It’s not 'till I put it under a magnifying glass that I thought, 'Oh my, what have we got going on here,'” Guijarro shared during an interview with National Geographic.

The $5 million photo in question depicts infamous 1800s Wild West outlaw Billy the Kid with his girlfriend and fellow gang members. After a year of extensive research on the subject, Guijarro and his wife Nancy became "historians by default" to prove the validity of their find.

“We spent the next four years solid going at this, traveling throughout the Southwest, calling people, going to western shows, talking to experts. A lot of people dismissed it out of hand because it’s too unbelievable.” Eventually, an auction house authenticated the photo and insured it for $5 million. The only other photo in existence believed to have been taken of Billy the Kid sold for $2.3 million in 2011.