The Quest to Acquire the Oldest, Most Expensive Book on the Planet

That's a problematic title, considering this Gutenberg bible is neither the oldest nor the most expensive book on the planet.

The Mormon Church spent $35 million on a printer's manuscript of The Book Of Mormon in 2017. [1]

Bill Gates spent ~$30 million on Da Vinci's Codex Leicester in 1994, which would be around $54 million today.

Even talking about printed works, The Bay Psalm Book was sold for $14.2 million in 2013.

Depending on your definition of "book", the oldest known books are things like The Etruscan Gold Book, The Nag Hammadi codices, the St Cuthbert Gospel, etc.

[1] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mormon-church-drops-35-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Leicester

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-25115524

Oldest printed book (the first issue of the Gutenberg bible).

The article refers to the oldest printed book, which is expensive by the virtue of being in the hands of a private collector(s). The Diamond Sūtra pre-dates the Gutenberg Bible by some margin, is in The British Library collection[1].

[0] https://wiganlanebooks.co.uk/blog/interesting/10-of-the-olde...

[1] https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-diamond-sutra

That Gutenberg book she bought in 1950 was then sold 1989 for cca 5 million:

https://librarianofbabel.wordpress.com/2014/12/01/estelle-do...

I’ve handled one of the bay psalm books. It’s very magical even if the object itself is quite humble.

If you want to get laughed out of Houghton library ask the staff to page the Gutenberg for you, as one of my friends did in their first year of grad school

No photos?!