Brian Lebel’s Western Treasures
BRIAN LEBEL HAS BEEN CRISSCROSSING THE COUNTRY FOR MORE THAN 30 YEARS IN HIS QUEST TO TRACK DOWN ARTIFACTS FROM THE OLD WEST.
By Michael Clawson
Walk through one of Brian Lebel’s shows or auctions and laid out before you is all of the Old West. On the tables and in display cases are all the classic cowboy items—guns and holsters, bits and spurs, saddles and chaps—but then there’s everything else: vintage hats and boots, Navajo blankets, Pueblo pots, poker chips, playing cards, whiskey bottles, pocketwatches, silver and turquoise jewelry, saloon doors, branding irons, lassos…all vintage, all authentic and much of it one-of-a-kind.
“It’s always fun for me because I really look forward to what I’m going to see next,” Lebel says. “I’m surprised year after year at what comes in. Add it all up, though, and it tells a complete story about this place we all love—the West.”
The Georgia-based dealer owns Old West Events, which hosts two annual shows a year: the Mesa Old West Show & Auction in Mesa, Arizona, and the Cody Old West Show & Auction in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The events offer an evening auction bookended by a two-day floor show, which brings out dealers from all around the country. And the dealers are often experts in their own right, whether it’s in Native American basketry, Winchester rifles, Hopi carvings or vintage movie posters.
“I’ll never forget a show back when we were in Texas. This young guy comes up with a pair of spurs. He wanted to sell them and they had been used in his family as they broke horses across three generations,” Lebel says. “I took one look at them and called the guy over who made them. He was at his booth right behind me. We get the best people at the shows, and the best materials.”
For Lebel, the West has been his passion for much of his life, which may be surprising considering his upbringing on the East Coast, in Chicopee, Massachusetts. Thousands of miles from the West—2,137 miles from Santa Fe, to be precise—lebel was drawn to what Western culture offered, from cowboys and ranching to Western design. He knew right away he was hooked when he bought a pair of spurs in Albany, New York. He owns the spurs still today.
But his path truly begins after high school, when he took a position at gunmaker Smith & Wesson, where he worked on the factory floor making firearms. The job frequently took him to gun shows, where he was exposed to different aspects of the West. “As soon as I was able, right around 1980, I packed my stuff and headed out to Cody, Wyoming. I started at a gun shop there and then later I was hired on at a ranch where I went to work as a wrangler,” Lebel remembers. “What basically happened was that I ran away to be a cowboy.”
His first years out in Cody were spent at Larry Larom’s famous Valley Ranch, he was a hunting and fishing guide outside Yellowstone National Park and he continued to travel to gun shows. He also became friends with several painters, including illustrator-turned-artist James Bama and historical artist Larry Edgar. When he was working at gun shows, 90 percent of his table would be guns, but then 10 percent would be art he brought with him. He quickly saw the potential for something more, so in 1986 he opened Old West Antiques in Cody. “It was one of the first shops of its kind,” Lebel says. “We had saddles, spurs, guns…all-around cowboy antiques.”
When Lebel wasn’t in his shop in Cody, he was often on the road chasing down materials, either from other dealers and stores around the country or from private sellers who didn’t know what to do with an item they had found or inherited. After stints on the road, Lebel would return to Wyoming with new loot for the shop. By 1988, he was hosting his own show. “The first Cody Old West Show was held in the Cody Auditorium. We set some tables up, and then when we had the sale we pushed all the tables to side and set up chairs. We also had a room dedicated to a single-spur swap meet, for people to come in and see if they could make a pair of spurs,” Lebel says. “It was fun. It wasn’t well organized, but people didn’t care because it was a good time. They came from all around the country to be there. The second year we had an organization of cowboy cartoonists. It wasn’t one of our most serious shows, but we all have fond memories.”
The Cody show lasted for 19 years, and eventually moved to Denver in 2009. (It was around here that Lebel met his wife, Melissa Mccracken, who has since become an instrumental force of her own at Old West Events. “I couldn’t do it without her,” he says.) Lebel also started working with the organizers of High Noon Show and Auction, and he eventually bought the show in 2014—today it is the Mesa Old West Show in Mesa, Arizona. In addition to shows in Cody and Denver, Old West Events has also hosted shows in Phoenix and Scottsdale, Arizona; Fort Worth, Texas; and in Santa Fe, which hosts his summer show. (The 2020 Santa Fe show was canceled due to the pandemic, but Lebel plans on making a triumphant return.)
To find auction items for all these shows, Lebel has lived much of the last 30 years on the road, and his Suburbans have the proof in their odometers. “I’m on my 10th Suburban in a row. We tried to figure it out, but it’s upwards of 2 million miles driven around the country. And what’s really crazy is some of the other dealers are driving further,” he says. “The best part
about traveling, and the part I miss now because of Covid, is just meeting people and seeing their things, hearing those stories. One of the best historic finds I ever came across was in this barn in New Hampshire. It was the best condition I’ve ever seen an 1880s Cheyenne saddle. And there it was in a barn. When you show up someplace you just never know what you’ll see or who you’ll meet. Now we’re doing it over the phone until all this passes, and it’s just not the same.”
Lebel continues, “When I do find something, a lot of what happens after that is detective work. My goal is to authenticate everything for our sales, and reputation on that part really matters to me, so I do everything I can to research these items. Years ago we got our hands on a gun that belonged to Bat Masterson. This gun, if real, could have easily gone for $100,000. But we did due diligence and had some really great people look at it. We were eventually told it was one of the greatest fakes ever produced. A serial number had been changed to match a serial number of a gun owned by Bat Masterson. So now it’s in my collection of fakes, and every now and again we see another gun come up with the same serial number, which is always alarming. But spotting fakes and doing due diligence, that’s part of the job, and it comes with being on the road hunting these items down.”
When it comes to authentic pieces, Lebel has handled some of the most sought-after Western items in the country, including Roy Rogers’ Nudie’s holster and belt rig, which sold for $97,750 in 2010; the Lone Ranger’s Edward H. Bohlin silver saddle ensemble, that sold for $153,400 in 2018; a photograph of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with the Wild Bunch that sold for $118,000 in 2019; and an Indian-used Custer Battlefield 1874 Sharps Rifle that was forensically proven to have been at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, which sold in 2017 at $258,750. He’s also sold items relating to Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Jesse James, Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, Geronimo and other iconic Western figures. His catalogs are fascinating just to read and have on a shelf because they’re filled with bits of Western history that can’t be found in any other books. Take, for instance, the story of gunfighters Ben Thompson and King Fisher. In 1884, Thompson posed for a photo and later gave the photo to Fisher as a gift. Shortly thereafter, the two men were gunned down. The photograph, stained with Fisher’s blood, was taken from his pocket and returned to his family. More than century later, Lebel offered the photo to his collectors. It sold above estimates at $94,000.
But the biggest blockbuster was a late-19th-century tintype of a young William Bonney. You may know him by his nickname: Billy the Kid. The outlaw had his picture taken in 1879 or 1880, and one of the four tintypes ended up with Billy’s friend, Dan Dedrick. The photograph, which was then the only known picture of the outlaw, was passed down through four generations. For many years it was publically exhibited in Lincoln, New Mexico, but the Dedrick family retained ownership. “I remember getting a call and them saying, ‘It’s time.’ The photograph had been in a safety deposit box for years. So we went and talked with the family and they knew what they had…they knew how important it was. At that time the most expensive antique photo that had ever been sold was $200,000, so
they were hopeful it would sell well,” Lebel remembers. “As we looked at it, though, we knew it was worth well more than $1 million.”
After picking up the photograph and driving around the country with it—he even made a stop at the Western Art Collector offices, where the staff was treated to a private viewing of the now-iconic image—lebel put it in his June 2011 sale in Denver. The auctioneer, speaking to a packed room, acknowledged the historic moment: “This is the only time in your lifetime you will see something like this,” he said before bidding started. The tintype was estimated at $300,000 to $400,000, but quickly shattered through those numbers. It waffled around $1.8 million for a bit, and eventually jolted up and settled on $2.3 million. The winning bidder was billionaire businessman and art collector William Koch.
“It was spectacular. Absolutely spectacular. And quite an experience to go through. By the next day I had been on Fox national news and all kinds of other places. At one point I was interviewed by a Scottish radio program and the BBC. There was interest all around the world,” he says. “It was a great lot just to watch because we had six bidders in up to a million dollars. And then they started dropping out pretty fast. When it sold it was just one of those moments. People at Christie’s and Sotheby’s talk about this stuff sometimes, and it’s true, you remember when you’re in the room when something sells for that much.”
Lebel leans hard on Western artifacts, but he’s also brought in huge numbers with fine art as well, including pieces by Alfred Jacob Miller, Olaf Wieghorst, Eanger Irving Couse and even an illustrated Charles M. Russell letter that sold for $126,500. One artist he has long championed is California cowboy painter Edward Borein, whose world auction record of $138,000 was set at a Lebel auction. The record was set about 100 lots before another world record—the Billy the Kid tintype.
Paintings, bronzes, finely tooled leather saddles, engraved silver, old photographs, bits and spurs, concho belts, Navajo blankets…it all falls under one umbrella for Lebel—fine art. “I think this goes way back for me. William Randolf Hearst had one of the most famous collectors of spurs. And he felt they went with his paintings and his art collection, so he displayed them with his art collection. I like that and I agree with that,” Lebel says. “Whether it’s a painting or an engraving on a gun, it’s all art, and it’s all beautiful and tells a story. All I’m doing is getting those stories out into the world.”