1902 Buffalo Bill's Wild West Poster
GUEST: I brought my Buffalo Bill poster. Had it for a long time and just enjoy the living daylights out of owning it. I found it at the old Mile High Flea Market. There was a gentleman and he had literally hundreds of posters. I worked out a deal with him to buy 'em all. And it turned out he was the front advance man for Buffalo Bill Cody. He would go to the towns in front of the show and leave posters in the walls, on the fences, wherever. The semi-interesting deal of it? He had been burning 'em. He used 'em for fireplace starters for years. And he had a neighbor over for dinner who asked if he should take 'em to the flea market, they might be worth something, and that's how I got it.
APPRAISER: Do you remember what year that was, like when about?
GUEST: 1976.
APPRAISER: How much did you pay?
GUEST: I paid $3,000 for all of 'em. And I sold the vast majority for almost double that.
APPRAISER: The history of Buffalo Bill is very well recorded. The man was the biggest showman in America, as famous as anyone could possibly be. You say Buffalo Bill, everybody knew him. His Wild West, his Congress of the Rough Riders, traveled around America, traveled around Europe. People were enthralled with western expansion and the mythology of the West. And he perfectly encapsulated that and played to that and became so incredibly popular. And in the course of doing it, printed hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of different posters. It was printed in Buffalo, New York by the Courier Lithography Company in 1902. And it's a beautiful stone lithograph. The-- as a printer, they were one of the top three or four in the country, and their work is magnificent. They're like lithographic paintings. And this really represents the height of their craftsmanship. And "Buffalo Bill's Wild West" came into being in 1883, and it changed its name to "Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World" in 1893. So this was later on in his career. Now it is printed to look like it's on a tanned buffalo hide.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: And on the tanned hide are all of these Native American pictographs, if you will.
GUEST: That's cool.
APPRAISER: Wonderful, classic imagery of Native American life. My colleague at the tribal table also told me that these painted hides were sold by the tribes everywhere to Westerners who wanted a souvenir. The painted hides had nothing to do with tribal life. So these were souvenirs, and Bill knew that. Buffalo Bill knew that, and he used them in his advertising 'cause he was playing to the Western ideal of the Native American. This is a poster that someone cut around the lines just to highlight the outline of the piece itself. This is a rare poster. There is no other known copy that can be seen. There are similar posters. It's also been trimmed. The condition isn't great.
GUEST: We had it appraised... eight years ago, ten years ago, and at that time, we were told that they thought it could be worth $3,000 to $5,000.
APPRAISER: Buffalo Bill, who was the most famous person in the world, you know, in the 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, who fell out of favor for a little while. For some reason that I can't explain now, in 2024, he is going through a resurgence of popularity, and there are people who still cultishly follow him and collect his material. And I say that endearingly.
GUEST: (chuckles)
APPRAISER: Because most of them are my clients.
GUEST: (laughs)
APPRAISER: I think if I had this at auction now, I would estimate it between $7,000 and $10,000. If it was in its original state, I would estimate it between $15,000 and $20,000.
GUEST: I-I did good. (chuckles)
APPRAISER: I'm pleased, and I'm honored, and I'm thrilled from the bottom of my geeky poster heart to see this.
$7,000 - $10,000 Auction
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Understanding Our Appraisals
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Value can change: The value of an item is dependent upon many things, including the condition of the object itself, trends in the market for that kind of object, and the location where the item will be sold. These are just some of the reasons why the answer to the question "What's it worth?" is so often "It depends."
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