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VictorVoyles wrote:

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I paid $80 bucks for a Stephen King. (Title escapes me. I lost it when some pipes burst in the garage.) When I was married, I had a chance to buy Clark Ashton Smith's Genius Loci for $125. But my then wife, had a herd of buffalo and I passed up on it. Now it goes for ten times that amount.

Books are a great investments. When the pipes burst in the garage, I lost just over a dozen titles which amounted to almost $3k. I've seen a copy of Psycho that was signed by Robert Bloch, Janet Leigh, and Anthony Perkins for sale for $250. When Janet Leigh died, the price jumped to $2750.

It also depends on what the subject is and the rarity it. The Gutenberg Bible you qouted, there are only three actual bibles in the world. Everythig has been a facsimile and those are goinng for upwards of $15,000.

Actually there are 26 known copies of the Guttenberg Bible. There are two versions, the 36 and 42 line versions. Last I read the only copy that went up for auction recently pulled in about $10 million. But it is rare that one of the few that are known to be in private collector's hands go on auction. I know of one copy in Princeton, NJ owned by a pretty well known collector. I think he has the 42 line version.

But really, the Guttenberg Bibles aren't that much sought after since it is rare that they move from private collector to private collector. Recently Shakespeares' First Folio was sold at auction for a little over 1.5 million I think. Ross Perot sold his copy of the Magna Carta (which is related to book adn emphera collecting) last year.

But, at least to me, the majority of collectors are collecting modern firsts more so than any other section. And clean near fine first editions of Fitzgerald's work can fetch in the mid six figures same with someone like Hemingway.

As for prices of books I've paid. let's just say I've paid in the mid four figures for a few volumes.