Paris — The revolver with which Vincent van Gogh is believed to have shot himself sold for 162,500 euros ($182,000) at a Paris auction on Wednesday -- nearly three times the estimate.

A private collector bought the gun, billed as the "the most famous weapon in the history of art", with a telephone bid, Art Auction told AFP.

Discovered by a farmer in 1965 in a field near Auvers-sur-Oise, a village north of Paris where the troubled Dutch painter spent the last few months of his life, the gun had previously been exhibited at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. — AFP