The Bible is not only the single most printed book in history, but it’s also the most read. This is primarily why most old Bibles don’t stand the test of time in terms of condition as well as other books that tend to sit on the shelf.

Therefore, it stands to reason why condition becomes an important factor in the value of an antique Bible.

Over 6 billion copies of the Bible have been printed since 1815, with fewer than 100 antique editions remaining.

800 AD

The Book of Kells is an illuminated manuscript created by Celtic monks around 800 AD. Written in Latin, it contains the four Gospels of the New Testament, adorned with intricate illustrations and elaborate iconography. 

It has survived Viking invasions and centuries of wear, thanks to careful preservation efforts. Today, it is housed in the Library of Trinity College Dublin, where it attracts thousands of visitors annually. 

900 A.D

In 2023, a 1,100 year old Bible, known as the Codex Sassoon, sold for $38 million at a New York City auction.

1446

The Gutenberg, also known as the 42 Line Bible, was the first substantial book printed around 1455 using “moveable type”, and is probably the most famous and sought-after antique Bible in the world.

Only 49 copies of this groundbreaking Bible survive, with fewer than half being complete. Printed in Latin, the Gutenberg Bible marks the beginning of the mass production of books.

In fact, just one page from the Gutenberg Bible could be expected to fetch $100,000 or more!

In 1978, a complete copy sold for $2.2 million, and just nine years later, a lone volume from the set sold for $5.4 million—more than double the initial price.

1640

In 2013, a Bay Psalm Book, first printed in the United States in 1640, one of only eleven known surviving copies of the original edition was sold for $14 million in 2013 (equivalent to $19.3 million today).

A rare Chinese Bible, originally estimated at just $1,000, stunned auctioneers when it sold for over $72,000. This 1815 translation, the first complete Bible in Chinese, was created by Protestant missionaries John Lassar and Joshua Marshman.

1960s

The Bible used by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis following President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 went up for auction, attracting significant attention.

This New Catholic Edition Illustrated Bible contains Jackie Kennedy’s handwritten note: “Bible we used the night Jack died to choose Ecclesiastes to be read at his funeral. JBK 1963.” It sold for $50,000.

Elvis Presley’s 1977 Bible,  fetched $94,000 in a 2012 auction.

1776

Before we reveal where the 1664 bible is located in Texas, let’s jump ahead over a hundred years later to Christoph Saur’s German Bible of 1776. 

In 1983,  the Boerne High School librarian gave the bible to the Boerne Area Preservation Society, which accepted it and began displaying during the Christmas Season at the society’s Kuhlmann-King Historical House.

This bible played an important role in the British occupation of Philadelphia and in the series of battles that occurred there between 1777 and 1778.

When British troops occupied Germantown (now within the Philadelphia city limits) in the fall of 1777, they established themselves in an area near the German Reformed Church.

Also nearby was the print shop of Christoph Saur II. Saur was the eldest son and successor to his father (also Christoph) who had printed the first Bible in a European language in the Americas and whose printing business had become one of the largest in colonial America.

In the year prior to the British occupation of Germantown, Saur embarked on the largest printing project in the Americas, a reprinting of his German Bible in an edition of 3000 copies.

This was a massive undertaking, involving the labor of many hands and almost certainly multiple presses in order to print the nearly 500,000 sheets of paper that would be needed to assemble these Bibles. Since each of these sheets would have gone through the press twice, that meant approximately 1 million pulls of the hand press were required to bring the project to completion.

By October of 1777, Saur and his workers had finished the printing and had already bound and sold a small number of copies. The bulk of the printed sheets, however, lay in piles in Saur’s warehouse awaiting folding, gathering, sewing, and binding for sale to future customers.

When British forces established their encampment in Germantown, they quickly seized the contents of the warehouse and put these printed sheets to a use that would be horrifying to the settler inhabitants.

The British troops began converting them into powder cartridges for their rifles. The benefit the British derived from this unexpected windfall of “free” paper was enormous: 400,000+ sheets of 15 x 20 inch paper could be converted, if need required, into several million powder cartridges, which would greatly increase the speed with which a rifle could be reloaded. 

A third edition of Saur’s Bible came to be known as the “Gun-Wad Bible.”  Almost all of them were destroyed by British soldiers. The soldiers would use the pages as fuel for their campfires, horse bedding, and most commonly, as cartridge paper or “gun-wad.”

Contemporary accounts tell of the 1776 edition being destroyed, and only 10 copies saved by the daughter of Saur, Catherine.

It is difficult to confirm how many copies exist today, however, it is obvious that copies are extremely rare.  In the end, the British depredation of Saur’s stock proved to be so extensive that fewer than 200 copies of this edition survive. In 2021, one sold for $2,400.

1614 Bible in Texas

For many years, a shopworn old Bible was stored in a closet at the Boerne High School on Johns Road in Boerne, Texas, about 30 minutes northwest of San Antonio.

It remained there, decaying slowly as books do, until it was discovered by the school’s librarian as she was cleaning and re-ordering the closet shelves. Nobody could remember who put it there or when. Anybody who knew about it thought it was “just another old Bible.” No one understood what it actually was.

A few years later, a visitor recognized the language in the Bible as Platt Deutsch (Low German), which is rarely spoken today.

This discovery sparked an investigation into the Bible’s origin. It was learned that the Bible must have originated in either the 16th or 17th century. Dr. Kenneth Hovey of the University of Texas-San Antonio was brought in, and that’s when it was discovered, through a series of clues that revealed that the Bible was printed in 1614.

It is one of seven known copies in the entire world. The copies are on display in: the British Library, Royal Danish Library, Stuttgart Library, Lüneburg Archives, Newberry Library —- and the Boerne Library.

There are still some mysteries regarding this Bible. The most important of these is how it traveled from Europe to end up in a closet in Boerne High School. The Bible weighs 15 pounds, so the decision to carry it across the Atlantic would not have been made lightly.

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