The most valuable volumes may surprise you—especially the most expensive book that fetched millions
The Most Expensive Book Ever Sold—and 24 More Worth a Fortune
Updated on Aug. 13, 2024
The most expensive books ever sold
While books, like everything else, have gone up in price, you can usually get a better deal on a secondhand copy. There are, of course, exceptions to this—like the ones that have sold for millions of dollars. That’s right: People have paid not hundreds, not thousands, but millions for certain books. And for the most expensive book ever sold? We’re talking more than $38 million.
What would prompt someone to shell out that kind of money for a used book? For some, it could be about owning a piece of history or preserving a first edition or rare, handwritten notebook belonging to their favorite thinker for future generations. Others may see purchasing classic books as an investment that they hope will increase in value over time.
Whatever their reasons, museums, cultural institutions and some individuals have spent huge amounts of money on what they consider the best books available on the market. So which titles have garnered some of the biggest sums? Read on to learn about 25 examples of the rarest, most valuable volumes on earth, including the most expensive book ever sold.
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Codex Sassoon by an unknown scribe
Sold for $38.1 million
The Codex Sassoon is the oldest near-complete Hebrew bible. It contains all 24 books (with the exception of about eight leaves), including the first 10 chapters of Genesis, and was written by an unknown scribe in the late 9th or early 10th century. After owning the Codex Sassoon since 1989, Swiss financier and collector Jacqui Safra put it up for auction at Sotheby’s in 2023, where it fetched a record-breaking $38.1 million, making it the most expensive book in the world and the book that has sold for the most money.
The highest bidder was the American Friends of ANU—Museum of the Jewish People (previously known as the Museum of the Jewish Diaspora) in Tel Aviv, courtesy of a donation from Alfred H. Moses, a former ambassador to Romania, and his family. The Codex is currently on display in the museum as part of the core exhibition.
Book of Mormon by Joseph Smith
Sold for $35 million
In September 2017, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) paid $35 million to purchase the printer’s manuscript of the Book of Mormon from the Community of Christ (formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), which had owned the book since 1903. “We hold the Book of Mormon to be a sacred text like the Bible,” Steven E. Snow, LDS Church historian and recorder, told the Salt Lake Tribune in 2017. “The printer’s manuscript is the earliest surviving copy of about 72% of the Book of Mormon text, as only about 28% of the earlier dictation copy survived decades of storage in a cornerstone in Nauvoo, Illinois.”
LDS members believe that in 1828, Joseph Smith, the church’s founder, translated the Book of Mormon into English from “reformed Egyptian” engravings on a set of gold plates. Two copies of the manuscript were made: the 1828 original, and a second copy created between April 1829 and January 1830—known as the “printer’s manuscript”—which was used in the typesetting of the first edition of the Book of Mormon prior to its publication in 1830.
Codex Leicester by Leonardo da Vinci
Sold for $30.8 million
When Bill Gates purchased the Codex Leicester in 1994 for $30.8 million, it became the most expensive book ever sold. Leonardo da Vinci, who may have had one of the highest IQs ever, compiled the 72-page notebook containing more than 300 of his illustrations, along with his notes and theories from 1506 to 1510 in Florence and Milan, Italy.
In the early 1700s, the Earl of Leicester purchased it and named it after himself. Then, in 1980, Armand Hammer, the chairman of Occidental Petroleum and an avid art collector, bought the Codex in 1980 at a sale at Christie’s in London for $5.6 million and tried to name it after himself (but it didn’t stick). Fourteen years later, Gates, then CEO of Microsoft, purchased it for $30.8 million. Fortunately for us, Gates decided to share it with the world through his interactive “Codescope” project.
Sherborne Missal by John Whas and John Siferwas
Sold for $24.56 million
Many of the books worth money are religious in nature, and the Sherborne Missal is no exception. It was created between 1399 and 1407 for St. Mary’s Abbey in Sherborne, Dorset, England, and sold for roughly $24.56 million in 1998. It primarily showcases the work of John Whas, the main scribe, and John Siferwas, the primary artist. Weighing in at a whopping 44 pounds, the illuminated manuscript contains texts for church services on 347 vellum leaves featuring thousands of illustrations of everything from religious figures to British birds to 100-plus images of Abbot Robert Brunyng, who commissioned the missal. The Sherborne Missal was intended to be a display of Brunyng’s godliness, wealth, status and political power.
Until 1998, Ralph Percy, the 12th Duke of Northumberland, owned the missal. However, he transferred ownership of it to the British Library in August of that year in order to pay part of the inheritance tax he owed the United Kingdom on his late father’s estate. At that time, the book was valued at £15 million ($24.56 million): £9.4 million covered the Duke’s overdue tax payment, and the Heritage Lottery Fund and the British Library kicked in the remaining £5.6 million.
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Northumberland Bestiary by unknown scribes
Sold for an estimated $20 million
Bestiaries were medieval encyclopedias detailing both real and mythical animals, which were also used to teach moral lessons according to a Christian worldview. The Northumberland Bestiary—named after the Northumberland nobility who owned the book since the 1700s—is one of the best surviving examples of this genre and features more than 100 animals and English Gothic illuminations. While the author (or authors) of the book is unknown, it was most likely made in a 13th-century English monastery.
In 2007, the J. Paul Getty Museum purchased the Northumberland Bestiary for an undisclosed sum, which experts estimate was around $20 million.
New Book of Tang compiled by Ouyang Xiu
Sold for $17.1 million
The New Book of Tang is the official history of the Tang Dynasty, which ruled imperial China between 618 and 907 C.E. Historian Ouyang Xiu of the Song Dynasty compiled the book in 1060. In 2018, China Guardian auctioned off this rare annotated woodblock edition containing a total of 51 volumes and 160 scrolls that once belonged to former president of China Cao Kun. After more than 10 minutes of heated bidding, the book sold for 100 million yuan ($17.1 million) to an unidentified buyer, making it one of the most expensive Asian books purchased to date. The New Book of Tang is held in a frame that’s 3.7 inches high, 2.4 inches wide, and has an opening of 4.3 inches.
Bay Psalm Book by a committee of Puritan leaders
Sold for $14.16 million
Unlike the other religious texts on this list of old books worth money, the Bay Psalm Book has the distinction of being the first book ever printed in Colonial America. Roughly 20 years after the first group of Puritans arrived in New England, a committee of 30 elders, including John Cotton and Richard Mather, commissioned the compilation of a new translation of the 150 Hebrew psalms into English, then had the text put to music that could be sung during church services. The result was the Bay Psalm Book, which was printed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1640.
In 2013, American businessman David Rubenstein purchased a copy of the Bay Psalm Book at a Sotheby’s auction for $14.16 million. There are 10 other surviving copies, mostly in the possession of libraries and universities.
Rothschild Prayer Book by various Flemish scholars
Sold for $13.6 million
These are some pricey prayers! This medieval Flemish collection of Christian texts, psalms and images sold for $13.6 million in 2014. Compiled in the early 1500s, the Rothschild Prayer Book features the works of myriad Flemish scholars and artists, including Gerard David. It’s a total of 254 separate pages—67 of which contain full-page paintings. “They are by the greatest painters and illuminators of their day,” Sandra Hindman, a dealer of illuminated manuscripts, told Forbes in 2014. “These are in perfect condition. Paintings of this period are never in perfect condition anymore.”
In addition to the illustrations, this particular copy of the Rothschild Prayer Book has an illustrious past. It was once owned by members of the Bavarian Wittelsbach dynasty and the Rothschild banking family in Austria, as well as confiscated by the Nazis (and subsequently returned by the German government). In 2014, an Australian businessman named Kerry Stokes purchased it from Christie’s in New York, then loaned it to the National Library of Australia the following year for an exhibit.
Einstein-Besso Manuscript by Albert Einstein and Michele Besso
Sold for $13.2 million
Written between June 1913 and early 1914 by Albert Einstein and his lifelong friend and colleague, Swiss-Italian engineer Michele Besso, this is one of only two surviving manuscripts documenting the development of the general theory of relativity. (The other, written the previous year, is in the Einstein Archive at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.) The 54-page nonfiction manuscript was sold to an unknown bidder at a November 2021 Christie’s auction for $13.2 million, making it one of the most expensive books in the world.
Part of the appeal of the Einstein-Besso Manuscript is that Einstein typically did not hold onto early drafts of his work, so this document is especially rare. “The manuscript isn’t bound, and there are many different types of loose paper, so you get the impression of a working document that’s full of energy, as if both men would grab the first page they could find to scribble their findings on,” Vincent Belloy, a specialist in the Books & Manuscripts department at Christie’s Paris, said in a statement.
Gospels of Henry the Lion by the monks of the Benedictine Abbey of Helmarshausen
Sold for $11.7 million
In 1983, the Gospels of Henry the Lion sold for $11.7 million at Sotheby’s London, making it the world’s most expensive book until Bill Gates purchased the Codex Leicester in 1994 for $30.8 million. The story of this gospel begins in the 12th century, when Henry the Lion—the Duke of the German State of Saxony from 1142 to 1180—commissioned its production for display on the Virgin Mary altar at Brunswick Cathedral. When monks at the Benedictine Helmarshausen Abbey completed the book around 1188, it was 266 pages long with 50 full-page Romanesque illustrations depicting scenes from all four gospels.
The book ended up back in the hands of the German government around 800 years later when it was purchased in 1983. Today, the complete manuscript has a home in Wolfenbüttel, Germany’s Herzog August Library. To ensure its safety, it is put on display only once every two years.
Birds of America by John James Audubon
Sold for $11.5 million
Between 1827 and 1838, naturalist John James Audubon published a series of detailed, vibrant prints depicting hundreds of different North American bird species. Together, the 435 illustrations form the complete first edition of Birds of America, of which there are only 119 remaining copies. Another reason for this bird book’s massive value is the fact that several of the bird species depicted are now extinct or endangered and close to extinction.
In 2010, Michael Tollemache, a London fine-art dealer and bird enthusiast, purchased a copy of Birds of America for $11.5 million at Sotheby’s Auction House in London. Two other copies of the book also raked in big money in the 20th century: an $8.8 million copy in 2000 and a $7.9 million copy in 2012.
St. Cuthbert Gospel by a local scribe at a Northumbrian monastery
Sold for $10.7 million
This 7th-century pocket-sized version of the Gospel of John is one of the earliest surviving examples of Western bookbinding—meaning it has never been rebound or resewn, and it retains its original red leather binding. Though the author of this gospel is unknown, it was likely written by a local scribe at the twin Northumbrian monasteries of Wearmouth-Jarrow in the late 600s. The St. Cuthbert Gospel was buried with its namesake around 698 and spent years in his coffin before becoming the property of an English Jesuit school.
The book measures just five-and-a-half by three-and-a-half inches. But what the book lacks in size, it more than makes up for in price: The British Library raised more than $10.7 million to buy it at a 2012 auction.
The First Folio by William Shakespeare
Sold for $9.98 million
Originally titled Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies, The First Folio is a 1623 collection of 36 plays by William Shakespeare—including 18 works that had never been previously published, like Macbeth and Julius Caesar—compiled by a group of the Bard’s friends seven years after his death. Without the First Folio, it is thought that these and other plays might have been lost forever.
In 2020, Stephan Loewentheil, a private collector and the founder of the 19th Century Rare Book and Photograph Shop in New York City, purchased The First Folio for $9.98 million. The book also came with an autographed letter dated 1809 from Shakespeare scholar Edmond Malone, attesting to its authenticity. While The First Folio is a unique piece of history, another one of Shakespeare’s works, a 1593 first edition of Venus and Adonis, is considered the rarest book in the world.
Babylonian Talmud printed by Daniel Bomberg
Sold for $9.32 million
In 2015, the first complete edition of the Babylonian Talmud—which includes commentaries on biblical law by rabbinical scholars and was compiled and printed by Daniel Bomberg in Venice from 1519 to 1523—sold for $9.3 million at a Sotheby’s auction in New York. It is one of only 14 complete sets still in existence. After spending centuries in the library of Westminster Abbey (yes, the site of countless royal funerals and weddings), it was traded to a private collector in 1956 for the Abbey’s original 900-year-old charter. Stephan Loewentheil of the 19th Century Rare Book & Photograph Shop in New York City purchased the sacred Judaic text in 2015.
Two volumes of the Yongle Encyclopedia compiled by Zhu Di
Sold for $9.19 million
Two rare volumes of the Yongle Encyclopedia—one on the geography of China’s lakes and one describing funeral rites—sold for $9.19 million at a 2020 auction in Paris. Considered the largest encyclopedia in Chinese history, the original complete Yongle Encyclopedia contained the work of more than 2,000 scholars in 22,877 handwritten volumes, composed of approximately 370 million characters. Zhu Di, an emperor of the Ming Dynasty, compiled the encyclopedia between 1404 and 1408. In 1562, the Jiajing emperor had two additional copies of the entire encyclopedia made—a smart move considering the original was ultimately lost. The two volumes sold in 2020 are among the 400 total volumes that remain today.
Histoire de Ma Vie by Giacomo Casanova
Sold for $9.06 million
Today, the term casanova is primarily used to describe a man possessing the power of seduction, but it’s also the last name of a real person: Giacomo Casanova. In 1789, while working as a librarian, the infamous lothario put pen to paper and wrote his memoir, Histoire de Ma Vie, or The Story of My Life. He continued to revise the more than 3,700-page manuscript until his death in 1798.
For years, people believed that Casanova’s memoir was destroyed at the end of World War II, but it was later discovered in a bank safe in Leipzig, Germany. “During the second world war, Leipzig was bombed, but the boxes were discovered in the basement of the bank where they were being kept. They were in good shape,” Marie-Laure Prevost, curator of Bibliotheque Nationale de France, told Reuters TV. In 2010, the French National Library purchased the book for $9.06 million, thanks to funding from a private donor.
The Olympic Manifesto by Pierre de Coubertin
Sold for $8.8 million
In 1892, Pierre de Coubertin, a French aristocrat, educator and historian, gave a history-altering speech outlining his vision to bring back the ancient Olympic Games. In this 14-page handwritten document, now known as The Olympic Manifesto, Coubertin makes a case for why athletics should no longer be limited to the military, arguing that the pursuit of athletic excellence benefits both the individual and society at large. Two years after giving this speech at an event marking the fifth anniversary of the French Athletics Association, Coubertin founded the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and in 1896, the first modern Olympic Games was held in Athens, Greece.
The Olympic Manifesto went missing for decades—including throughout World Wars I and II—until the Marquis d’Amat of France “scoured flea markets around Europe and in the United States before he was guided towards a collector in Switzerland,” according to the IOC. In December 2019, Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov bought the original copy of The Olympic Manifesto for $8.8 million and donated it to the Olympic museum in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Luzzatto High Holiday Mahzor by Abraham (a scribe)
Sold for $8.31 million
A medieval Jewish prayer book known as the Luzzatto High Holiday Mahzor was sold to an anonymous American buyer for $8.3 million in October 2021. The book was written by a scribe named Abraham in Bavaria in the late 13th or early 14th century and made its way through Italy and France in the centuries since. In addition to detailed illustrations and embellishments, the Luzzatto High Holiday Mahzor is an important work because it contains several ancient versions of prayers that are no longer part of the Ashkenazi Jewish tradition, as well as the liturgy for the two holiest festivals on the Jewish calendar: Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
Sold for $7.5 million
The 17,000 lines of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales tell the story of a motley crew of pilgrims who engage in a storytelling contest while on their way to visit a holy shrine. William Caxton printed the first edition of the book in 1477; only 12 copies have survived. In 1998, a billionaire philanthropist named Sir Paul Getty bought one of these first editions for £4.6 million ($7.5 million). If you do the math, the book’s 24 separate tales work out to be approximately $312,500 each! The rare book is currently housed in the library of Getty’s Wormsley Estate in Buckinghamshire, England.
Action Comics #1 by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster
Sold for $6 million
Even if the title Action Comics #1 doesn’t mean anything to you, you’re probably familiar with its main character: Superman. But this isn’t just any Superman comic—it’s the one that introduced the world to the Man of Steel in 1938. Written by Jerry Siegel and penciled by Joe Shuster, Action Comics #1 is widely considered to be the most important superhero comic book of all time.
The Certified Guaranty Company (CGC), a grading service considered the global standard for determining the condition of comic books and trading cards, gave it a grade of 8.5 out of 10, making this copy particularly valuable. And with only about 100 surviving copies of this issue—out of the original 200,000 that were printed—it’s also incredibly rare. Just two of those copies are in better condition. In April 2024, this copy of Action Comics #1 was sold to an anonymous bidder for $6 million, making it the most valuable comic book in the world.
The Deeds of Sir Gillion de Trazegnies in the Middle East by David Aubert and Lieven van Lathem
Sold for $5.87 million
The Deeds of Sir Gillion de Trazegnies in the Middle East is a 15th-century Flemish manuscript that tells the fictional tale of the adventure and romance a medieval nobleman experiences while traveling to Egypt on pilgrimage. French chronicler David Aubert transcribed and adapted the story, and artist Lieven van Lathem painted the illustrations—including eight half-page miniatures and 44 ornately decorated initials across 237 leaves of vellum—in 1464. The Duke of Burgundy Philip III, also known as Philip the Good, commissioned the manuscript as a gift for one of his courtiers.
This book is especially rare because it’s one of only four known manuscripts of The Deeds of Sir Gillion in French. It was designed to be read out loud over a series of evenings—each ending with a cliffhanger. The person reading the story would show the audience images from the book as they read. In December 2013, the J. Paul Getty Museum purchased the manuscript for approximately $5.87 million. It is not currently on display in the museum.
Les Liliacées by Pierre-Joseph Redoute
Sold for $5.5 million
Les Liliacées (The Lilies) is more than an expensive book—it’s a work of art. Actually, it’s 468 watercolors on vellum that depict the flowers once grown in the gardens of Malmaison, St.-Cloud, Versailles and Sevres, France. Botanist and painter Pierre-Joseph Redoute created the book between 1802 and 1816, and it’s made up of 16 volumes and weighs a total of 320 pounds. Yes, you read that right!
In November 1985, W. Graham Arader, a rare-book and print dealer, purchased the book for $5.5 million. But this wasn’t just any version of Les Liliacées: This copy once belonged to Empress Joséphine de Beauharnais and remained in her family until the 1930s.
The Gutenberg Bible
Sold for $5.39 million
Widely credited with inventing the moveable-type printing press, Johannes Gutenberg put his creation to work around 1455, when he printed the first mass-produced book in Western Europe: a Latin translation of the Bible. Today, there are only 48 surviving copies of the original Gutenberg Bible. One of these was sold to Maruzen Co. Ltd., a major Japanese bookseller, in 1987 for $5.39 million—which, at the time, was the highest amount paid for a single book. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles sold the Bible to raise funds to train new members of the clergy. This copy of the Gutenberg Bible was sold again in 1996—this time to Keio University in Tokyo for an undisclosed sum. Because of its place in history, the Gutenberg Bible is considered one of the most sought-after books in the world.
Traité Des Arbres Fruitiers by Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau
Sold for $4.5 million
The 18th-century French handbook Traité Des Arbres Fruitiers (Treatise of Fruit Trees) was written by botanist Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau and contains five separate volumes filled with detailed illustrations of 16 different species of fruit trees, based on 30 years of observation. Artists Pierre Antoine Poiteau and Pierre Jean François Turpin painted the illustrations between 1804 and 1809. This manuscript sold for about $4.5 million at an auction in Brussels in 2006.
The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling
Sold for $3.98 million
Completed in 2007, The Tales of Beedle the Bard was J.K. Rowling’s first book since the end of the Harry Potter series. The 157-page book contains five stories—one of which (“The Tale of the Three Brothers”) appears in the Harry Potter novels. The British author produced seven separate handwritten copies of the book, each filled with her own illustrations, and gave six to friends and people who worked on the Harry Potter books. The seventh copy was put up for auction at Sotheby’s in New York in December 2007, where London dealer Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox forked over $3.98 million on behalf of Amazon.com to buy the book. The proceeds of the auction went to the Children’s High Level Group—now known as Lumos—a charity Rowling co-founded in 2005.
While the whereabouts of Amazon’s original copy of the book is not known, in 2008, the media giant used it to create and publish a limited-run collector’s edition of the book “designed to evoke the spirit of the handcrafted original,” according to an Amazon press release. Each copy of the book cost $100, with the net proceeds also benefiting the Children’s High Level Group.
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