WATCH: Van Gogh's rusty gun used to kill himself has a new buyer

A rusty gun believed to have been used by the Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh to kill himself was sold for $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.