5 rare books, for which fabulous sums were laid out at auctions

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Real works of art and historical rarities, of course, cannot be accurately estimated in monetary terms, since many of them are simply priceless. However, each item costs as much as they are willing to pay for it, and if the item was once sold, then it is on this price that you can rely. In our review, a story about five books, for which record amounts of money were paid at auctions in different years. Today they are considered the most expensive in the world.

Codex Leicester Leonardo da Vinci

$ 30.8 million in 1994 at Christie's auction

The handwritten manuscript, created by Leonardo da Vinci, consists of 18 sheets of paper folded into notebooks and stapled together. 72 pages are covered by the hand of the great master in his special mirrored font, so the records can be read only with the help of a mirror. The book was created in Milan in the years 1506-1510. In it, Leonardo wrote down his reasoning about natural phenomena. The manuscript got its name much later, when in 1717 the Earl of Leicester became its owner. In 1994, the priceless rarity was put up for sale at Christie’s auction. It was bought by Microsoft founder Bill Gates for $ 30.8 million, making it the most expensive book in human history. Now the book is shown in turn in different museums around the world.

The Gospel of Henry the Lion

$ 11.7 million in 1983 at Sotheby's

The trace of this handwritten medieval masterpiece has been lost several times in history. It was created by Benedictine monks in the XII century by order of the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, Henry the Lion. The manuscript contains 226 handwritten pages with 50 beautiful miniatures. The masterpiece was lost in the Middle Ages, then “floated out” for a short while in the 19th century and disappeared again, until in 1983 it was put up for sale by an anonymous collector. The rarity was bought by the German government and has since been kept in the library named after Baron Augustus in Wolfenbüttel - in the places where it was created.

Birds of America by John James Audubon

$ 11.5 million in 2010 at Sotheby's

The illustrations for the first edition of this album, published in London from 1827 to 1838, were printed and then hand-painted with watercolors. To ensure a circulation of about 200 copies, 50 people worked on this. Despite the unusual illustrations, these tomes are considered printed, and a copy from Lord Hesketh's collection is the most expensive print ever sold. This book is also of great scientific importance, since before the era of color photography, it preserved for us incredibly accurate and anatomically correct images of birds, many of which have become extinct over the past 200 years.

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

$ 7.5 million in 1998 at Christie's auction

This work of the late 14th century remained unfinished. The book in question was printed in 1477 at the printing house of the English pioneer printer William Caxton at Westminster Abbey. Of the 12 surviving examples, only one is in a private collection, and it was it that was put up for sale in 1998. Interestingly, in the 19th century, this work was banned in the United States because of its obscenity, and to this day all reprints are heavily censored and abridged. Despite this, he was filmed several times.

First Folio: Comedies, Chronicles, and Tragedies by William Shakespeare

$ 6.2 million in 2001 at Christie's auction

This collection of 36 works by the great playwright was published 7 years after the death of the author in 1623. The value of this publication is enormous, if only because Shakespeare's friends and associates, many of whom participated in his author's productions of plays, did a huge and difficult job, verifying the texts. The fact is that by that time there were already many inaccurate samples, rewritten or reprinted with large errors. In the introduction to the first folio, the creators wrote about this:

A total of 750 copies were probably printed. About 230 have survived to this day. For a record $ 6 million for this edition, it was bought in 2001 by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft. It is interesting that in 2006 another copy of the first folio went under the hammer much cheaper - for 5.2 million.

The statements of the great poet are still striking in their accuracy. Perhaps that is why his works are considered immortal: 20 postcards with quotes from the great Shakespeare that are still relevant today.