- This Bay Psalm Book will almost certainly be joining an individual, rather than institutional collection. “Every time one of these books has gone up for sale, the buyer has come out of left field—has not been someone anyone expected to be in rare books,” says Reese. For an institution, it doesn’t make sense to purchase outright an historic publication that it can visit instead. Record-breaking bids usually come from individual collectors, though they may later donate the pieces to universities or museums. Some of the most expensive past book and manuscript sales, like the $11.5 million edition of John Audubon’s The Birds of America and the $21.3 million Magna Carta were purchased by private buyers, in 2010 and 2007, respectively.
This copy is expected to bring in between 15 and 30 million. That is quite an appreciation over that time period. Rosenbach made a wise investment...Then in 1947, book collector Abraham Rosenbach bought the last copy of the Bay Psalm book sold for $151,000 on behalf of Yale University.
A quick search for most expensive "books," brings up he Codex Leicester, which was Leonardo da Vinci's journal — $30.8 million valuation. -How cool would it be to own that!
The most famous of da Vinci’s scientific journals, the 72-page notebook is filled with the great thinker’s handwritten musings and theories on everything from fossils to the movement of water to what makes the moon glow. The manuscript was first purchased in 1717 by Thomas Coke, who later became the Earl of Leicester, and then, in 1980, bought from the Leicester estate by art collector Armand Hammer (whose name the manuscript bore for the fourteen years he owned it). In 1994, Bill Gates nabbed the journal at auction for $30,800,000, making it the most expensive book ever purchased. But hey, at least Gates put his purchase to good use — he had the book scanned and turned into a screensaver distributed with Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95.
-sourced from Flavorwire