14 Bibliophiles Who Spent an Obscene Amount of Money on a Single Book
The fact that an oligarch can purchase a founding document and let the federal government visit it is surely indicative of a healthy democracy.
David Booth: $4 Million
Canadian-American gym teacher James Naismith invented the game of “Basket Ball” in 1891, and a year later, typed up and hand-annotated the rules as they stood at the time. In a monumental oversight, there’s no mention of whether dogs can play. In 2010, this guy David Booth scooped up the original rulebook for $4 million and permanently loaned it to the University of Kansas.
Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association: $9 Million
This nonprofit managed to nab George Washington’s own copy of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, complete with little notes in the margins that he wrote himself, for $9 million in 2012.
Stephan Loewentheil: $9 Million
Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories & Tragedies, also known as the First Folio, is thought to be one of the most influential books ever published. Shakespeare’s colleagues compiled 36 of his works a few years after he died, and it’s a good thing they did — 20 of them weren’t previously printed anywhere else, and may have been lost to time. Old book dork Stephan Loewentheil got it for a bargain at $9 million.
The Library of Congress: $10 Million
This one is technically a map, not a piece of literature, but it’s so much cooler than all the lame gospel books you’re going to read about, so we’re counting it. The Waldseemüller map was published by German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller in 1507, and is the first map to use the term “America” and show the continent as separated from Asia by the Pacific Ocean.
Michael Tollemache: $11 Million
Big-time bird freak John James Audubon drew up 119 copies of his 1827 series The Birds of America. The most expensive copy was sold to this London art dealer for $11 million, but in total, eight copies of the book have sold for over $1 million.
The German Government: $11 Million
What if the Bible was way shorter and almost all pictures? Now you’re thinking like royalty! Around 1175, the Duke of Saxony (who called himself Henry the Lion… cool man) commissioned The Gospels of Henry the Lion as a little egocentric gift for Germany’s Brunswick Cathedral. In 1983, the government of Germany bought it for $11 million and stored it at the Herzog August Library.
Kerry Stokes: $14 million
The Rothschild Prayerbook is like a page-a-day calendar, except instead of dad jokes you get a new prayer — and you’re supposed to do it every hour. It was made by a whole group of artists in the early 1500s, and aside from a brief confiscation by the Nazis, was owned by the Rothschild family for centuries. Australian media and mining magnate Kerry Stokes nabbed it for $14 million in 2014.
David Rubenstein: $21 million
Government meddler and private equity firm founder David Rubenstein has bought a ton of historical documents — the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Emancipation Proclamation, the 13th Amendment — and graciously allowed government institutions to borrow them. That’s capitalism, baby! His crown jewel may be an early copy of the Magna Carta, which he got for $21 million, or the Bay Pslam Book, the first book printed in the U.S., with a price tag of $14 million.
The British Library: $21 Million
The Sherborn Missal is an intricately decorated 347-page book of Bible stories. The British Library bought the world’s most expensive picture book for $21 million in 2001. In 2012, they also purchased a little pocket-sized gospel book that was graverobbed from a saint in 1104, for $14 million.
Bill Gates: $30 million
Mr. “Started From the Bottom” himself decided in 1994 that he had enough cash in the bank to spend an inflation-adjusted $63 million of it on Leonardo DaVinci’s journal. Maybe some rictus-grinned oligarch will buy Gates’ journal in 400 years, and read about how horny he was for MS-DOS in 1982.
Wang Zhongjun: $31 Million
The Chinese billionaire already owned a Van Gogh and a Picasso when he tossed a small fortune at a letter written by Song dynasty Renaissance man Zeng Gong. Sometime at the end of the first century, the poet politician jotted off a letter to a friend on the back of some scrap paper, and in 2016 it sold for $31 million.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: $35 Million
Joseph Smith’s sidekick and personal secretary Oliver Cowdery wrote down Smith’s fever dreams in what would become the Book of Mormon in 1829. Almost 200 years later in 2017, the Mormon Church shelled out $35 million to an offshoot/competing religion, The Community of Christ, to get it back.
Alfred H. Moses: $38 Million
It sounds like a hair product that promises to fix split ends and reinforce your follicles with vitamin B8 or whatever, but Codex Sassoon 1053 is the oldest complete copy of the Hebrew Bible, dating back to the 10th century. The former U.S. Ambassador to Romania bought it for $38 million in 2023, and donated it to Israel’s Museum of the Jewish People.
Kenneth C. Griffin: $48 million
Remember when a bunch of crypto dweebs tried to buy the Constitution in 2021? ConstitutionDAO was a crowdfunding campaign that raised $47 million with the aim of buying — and then democratically deciding what to do with — an original print of the founding document. At the time, a bunch of nerds taking turns wiping their asses with the Constitution seemed gross, but now it’s par for the course. Hedge fund manager Kenneth C. Griffin barely outbid them. Justice prevails.
