The 10 most expensive books and manuscripts ever auctioned

A book is one of the few things that can be read for nothing and still be worth more than a house. The ten sales below span eleven centuries, from a sheepskin Bible written around the year 900 to a pamphlet printed in Philadelphia in 1787, and each ended in a room where two people refused to stop bidding. That last part is the only thing a school hall shares with Sotheby's, and it is the part that decides the total.

Each figure below is the price as reported at the time of the sale, with the house and the date, so it can be checked. A list only ranks in one currency, so every heading is in US dollars, with the original in brackets. Where the hammer price and the final price differ, both are given.

1. First printing of the United States Constitution — $43.2 million

Sotheby's, New York, 19 November 2021, and the highest price paid at auction for any book or printed document. It is one of thirteen surviving copies of the official first printing made for the Constitutional Convention, and one of only two then in private hands. The estimate was fifteen to twenty million dollars. The winner, Kenneth Griffin, was bidding against seventeen thousand people who had crowdfunded a bid.

2. Codex Sassoon — $38.1 million

Sotheby's, New York, 17 May 2023. The oldest near-complete Hebrew Bible, written on 792 sheepskin pages around 900 CE and missing about eight leaves. The hammer price was 33.5 million dollars; the rest is buyer's premium, and that gap is worth noticing. It was bought by the former ambassador Alfred H. Moses for the ANU Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv, which means the most valuable book ever sold now sits in a public collection.

3. Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Leicester — $30,802,500

Christie's, New York, 11 November 1994, bought by Bill Gates. Seventy-two pages of notes and diagrams on water, fossils, astronomy and the light of the moon, written in mirror script between 1506 and 1510. Armand Hammer had bought the same manuscript in 1980 for a fraction of the sum. It held the record for a book for twenty-seven years.

4. Magna Carta, 1297 exemplification — $21.3 million

Sotheby's, New York, December 2007, consigned by Ross Perot and bought by David Rubenstein. The hammer came down at 19 million dollars; fees took the total to 21.3 million. Rubenstein bid by telephone from a side room to stay anonymous, and his stated reason for bidding was that the document would otherwise leave the country. It has been on loan to the National Archives in Washington ever since.

5. The Bay Psalm Book — $14,165,000

Sotheby's, New York, 26 November 2013, a record for a printed book. Eleven copies survive of the first book printed in what became the United States, made in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1640. This one belonged to Old South Church in Boston, whose congregation voted to sell one of its two copies and put the proceeds into its ministries. Rubenstein bought this one too.

6. The Rothschild Prayerbook — $13,605,000

Christie's, New York, 29 January 2014, and the record for an illuminated manuscript. A Flemish book of hours of about 1500 to 1520, 252 pages with 67 full-page miniatures. It was seized by the Nazis in 1938 and returned to the Rothschild family in 1999, then sold that same year for a little over 13 million dollars. Fifteen years later it made the same sum again, a useful corrective to the idea that these objects only go up.

7. The Einstein–Besso manuscript — about $13 million (€11.6 million)

Christie's, Paris, 23 November 2021, and by far the most ever paid for anything in Einstein's hand. Fifty-four pages of working notes towards general relativity, written with his friend Michele Besso between June 1913 and early 1914, some sheets carrying one man's work on the front and the other's on the back. The estimate was around a quarter of what it made. It survived only because Besso kept it; Einstein threw such things away.

8. The Gospels of Henry the Lion — $11.8 million (£8,140,000)

Sotheby's, London, 6 December 1983, lot 50. A twelfth-century Helmarshausen gospel book, 266 pages with 50 full-page illuminations, made for the Duke of Saxony. The buyer was a coalition: the West German government, the states of Lower Saxony and Bavaria, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and private donors from Brunswick, acting together to keep it in Germany.

9. Audubon, The Birds of America — about $11.5 million (£7,321,250)

Sotheby's, London, 7 December 2010, and at the time a record for any printed book. A complete copy of the double elephant folio, 435 birds shown life size across a thousand plates, issued between 1827 and 1838. The estimate was four to six million pounds; four collectors chased it well past that.

10. Shakespeare, First Folio — $9,978,000

Christie's, New York, 14 October 2020, a record for any printed work of literature. The 1623 collection of 36 plays, eighteen of which had never been printed before and would otherwise almost certainly be lost. It was the first complete copy on the market in nearly two decades, estimated at four to six million dollars, and it beat the previous First Folio record of 6.1 million.

Two that did not make the list

The printer's manuscript of the Book of Mormon changed hands for 35 million dollars in 2017, the St Cuthbert Gospel for nine million pounds in 2012. Neither was an auction; both were private sales. The distinction matters: a private price is what one buyer would pay, an auction price is what the second-place bidder would pay. Every figure above is the losing bid plus one increment.

What a room with twenty lots can take from this

Start with that last sentence, because it is the whole business. The Constitution made 43 million because seventeen thousand strangers had pooled their money and would not go away quietly. The Audubon went to nearly twice its high estimate because four people wanted it rather than one. When you build a lot list, the useful question is not what a lot is worth but who else in the room will want it. Two committed bidders per significant lot beat a hall full of polite interest every time, and a small committee usually knows its guests well enough to arrange that. There is more on lot planning in the guide.

Second, notice how often the estimate was wrong. Einstein's notes made four times theirs, the Constitution more than double. Estimates and opening bids are not predictions; they are invitations. Set an opening low enough that the first hand goes up quickly, because nothing on this page reached its price from a standing start. How that works in a live room is on the how it works page.

Third, provenance is the story, and the story is what people bid on. Old South Church did not sell a book, it sold a book its congregation had owned since 1640. Rubenstein was not buying a document, he was keeping one in the country. Three honest sentences about where a lot came from and who is giving it will do more than a better photograph. The page for art auctions goes into that further.

Fourth, the hammer price is not the price. Codex Sassoon hammered at 33.5 million and cost 38.1. Charity auctions have their own version of that gap in fees, card charges and unpaid lots, and it belongs in the budget beforehand rather than after. The page for charities and galas covers what to plan for.

You can build a lot list and rehearse a full evening before committing to anything: there is a walk-through at getting started.

Prices as reported at the time of sale; figures include buyer's premium where stated.