Pancho Villa’s last saddle, made shortly before his assassination in 1923 went at auction for a cool $718,000. That exceeded presale estimates of $150,000 to $250,000 by just a bit. Read the story here. Went to a South Texas-based collector who plans to put it in a museum.
I’ve never been a fan of highly ornate saddles, but there’s some pretty cool silver work on this thing.
Oscar Case says
He could open a jewelry store with all that silver.
John Maddox Roberts says
Years ago I read an account of Villa’s entrance into Mexico City. There was a famous saddle shop in MC that had fabulous saddles worth thousands (tens of thousands in modern money). Villa’s men headed straight to that shop to loot it, only to find that Zapata’s men had gotten there first and got all the saddles. They complained that it was unfair that Zapata’s state of Morelos was close to MC so that his men got all the good loot.
JimC says
There’s also a great story about Zapatistas opening fire on a fire engine in MC. They’d never seen one before and when it careened down the street at them, they did what came naturally….
The Mexican Revolution is a treasure trove of colorful, tragic and downright bizarre stories. Some are legends, but the verifiable facts are astounding enough.